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HEAVENLY  BRIDEGROOMS 

BY  THEODORE  SCHROEDER 
AND  IDA  C. 

The   Sons   of   God   saw  the   daughters   of  men   that   they 

were  fair;  and  they  took  them  wives  of  all  that 

they  chose. 

Genesis  6:2. 

EXPLANATORY  NOTE.  —  In  the  course  of  my  studies  on  the  ero- 
togenesis  of  religion  I  became  interested  in  the  life  work  and  mental 
characteristics  of  one  Ida  C.,  a  woman  who  committed  suicide  in 
her  forty-fifth  year.  I  first  heard  of  her  after  her  death,  but  it  seemed 
to  me  that  a  psychologic  study  of  her  would  yield  rich  materials  as 
a  contribution  to  the  psychology  of  religion.  Consequently,  I  bestirred 
myself  to  secure  information,  both  biographical  and  auto-biographical. 
Among  the  materials  gathered  was  her  life  long  correspondence  with 
friends,  a  number  of  published  essays  written  by  her,  some  scraps 
of  manuscripts,  and  two  completed  but  unpublished  book  manuscripts. 
This  material  will  later  constitute  the  subject  of  my  analysis.  Ida 
C  --  was  for  a  number  of  years  a  college  teacher  and  for  a  long  time 
associated  with  various  kinds  of  free-thinking  heretics.  She  was 
never  married.  In  due  time  she  became  the  victim  of  erotic  hallucina- 
tions to  which  she  gave  a  "spiritual"  interpretation.  Later,  when  her 
conduct  brought  her  to  the  verge  of  incarceration  in  a  jail  or  in  an 
asylum,  she  endeavored  frankly  to  meet  the  issue  of  her  own  insanity. 
The  resultant  investigation  to  her  mind  seemed  a  complete  vindication, 
not  only  of  her  sanity,  but  also,  of  the  objective  reality  and  spirituality 
of  her  erotic  experiences.  This  vindication  she  reduced  to  writing. 
The  manuscript  is  now  in  my  possession.  It  seems  to  me  under  the 
circumstances  of  this  case  and  the  future  studies  which  I  am  going  to 
make,  partly  from  other  papers  of  the  same  author,  that  this  is  too 
valuable  a  document  to  be  mutilated  by  editing.  Furthermore,  others 
should  be  given  equal  opportunity  with  myself  in  the  interpretation 
of  this  material.  The  manuscript  had  been  revised  by  its  author  and 
in  a  number  of  places  it  was  quite  impossible  to  decipher  the  pen- 
interlineations,  or  replace  words  destroyed  by  the  tearing  of  the  manu- 
script through  frequent  handling  before  it  came  into  my  possession. 
At  such  places  a  word  may  be  occasionally  omitted  or  a  connection 

(i) 


2   •      ,     .  •  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

left  defective,  otherwise  the  following  document  is  in  the  exact  words 
of  its  author.  This  essay,  I  believe,  was  written  before  her  thirty-fifth  year, 
that  is  ten  years  before  her  suicide,  and  twenty-two  years  before  the 
present  publication.  Her  subsequent  development  will  be  brought 
out  in  my  own  study  of  her.  Just  before  she  wrote  this  she  was  a 
short  time  a  voluntary  inmate  of  an  asylum  and  pronounced  incurably 
insane.  She  left  the  country  to  escape  legal  commitment. 

THEODORE  SCHROEDER. 

PREFACE. 

IT  has  been  my  high  privilege  to  have  some  practical 
experience  as  the  earthly  wife  of  an  angel  from 
the  unseen  world.  In  the  interests  of  psychical  research, 
I  have  tried  to  explore  this  pathway  of  communication 
with  the  spiritual  universe,  and,  so  far  as  lay  in  my 
power,  to  make  a  sort  of  rough  guide-book  of  the  route. 
For  not  all  wives  of  heavenly  bridegrooms  travel  the  same 
path  at  first.  There  are  roads  running  into  this  one 
from  every  religion  and  folklore  under  the  sun,  since  the 
pathway  of  marital  relations  on  the  Borderland  was 
once,  and  still  is,  as  I  hope  to  show,  one  of  the  main 
thoroughfares  connecting  our  world  with  the  world  beyond 
the  grave.  This  thoroughfare,  along  part  of  which  I 
hope  to  conduct  the  reader  in  imagination,  is  marked  with 
signposts,  many  crumbling  under  the  religious  storms 
of  centuries,  others  preserved  as  sacred  trellises  upon 
which  to  train  a  rank  growth  of  flourishing  superstition, 
and  still  others  fresh  with  modern  paint  and  gilding. 
Part  of  this  thoroughfare  runs  straight  through  the 
Christian  Church,  or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  the 
foundations  of  the  Church  are  laid  upon  this  very  princi- 
ple. For  Jesus  himself  is  said  to  be  the  child  of  a  union 
between  an  earthly  woman  and  a  heavenly  briedgroom 
who  (however  godlike,  and  whatever  the  details  of  the 
relation)  certainly  seems  to  have  manifested  to  Mary 
on  the  occult  plane.  If  it  be  objected  that  Mary's  Border- 
land spouse  was  not  an  angel,  but  God  himself,  and 
therefore  Borderland  laws  could  be  laid  aside  in  His 
case,  I  reply  that  modern  philosophy  holds  apparent 
miracles  to  be  no  violation  of  natural  laws,  but  to  have 


Theodore  Schroeder  3 

happened  in  accordance  with  some  law  as  yet  unknown 
to  us,  for  God  never  breaks  His  laws,  and  if  He  became 
a  Borderland  spouse  to  Mary,  it  must  have  been  in 
accordance  with  Borderland  laws.  And  we,  as  made  in 
His  likeness,  are  bound  by  the  same  natural  laws  as 
God.  Moreover,  as  Mary  and  me  are  sharers  in  a  com- 
mon humanity,  she  and  me  are  bound  alike,  sharers 
in  the  glorious  possibilities  of  Borderland. 

The  abraded  survivals  of  an  ancient  religious  teach- 
ing of  marital  purity  and  self-control  of  so  lofty  a  type 
that  it  has  been  obscured  by  the  fogs  in  the  lowlands 
of  modern  sensuality.  Enlightened  by  my  experiences 
as  the  wife  of  my  unseen  angel  visitant,  I  wrote  a  de- 
fence (from  a  folklore  standpoint)  of  the  Danse  du  Ventre, 
which  was  published  in  the  New  York  World.  This 
1  afterwards  added  to,  and  issued  in  a  typewritten  essay 
for  private  cirulation.  As  the  essay  showed  that  I  wrote 
from  experience;  as  I  was  still  "Miss"  C. —  — .  and  as 
my  social  standing  had  hitherto  been  above  suspicion;  I 
deemed  it  only  prudent  to  state  to  my  readers  that  I 
had  acquired  my  knowledge  from  a  spirit  husband. 
This  I  did  on  a  little  slip  of  paper  pinned  to  the  last 
page  of  the  essay.  The  persecutions  which  in  consequence 
of  this  straightforward  effort  to  tell  the  truth  simply  and 
clearly — I  suffered  at  the  hands  of  those  who  deny  the 
possibility  of  angelic  communication,  need  not  be  dwelt 
on  here.  Suffice  it  to  say  that,  while  my  non-occultist 
readers  who  did  not  know  me  personally,  pooh-poohed 
the  idea  of  a  spirit  husband,  declared  that  I  must  surely 
speak  from  an  illicit  experience,  my  non-occultist  friends, 
who  knew  my  habits  of  life  from  day  to  day,  could 
find  no  explanation  for  the  essay  but  that  I  must  have 
gone  crazy;  and  two  physicians  made  efforts  to  have  me 
incarcerated  as  insane.  One  of  the  latter  remarked, 
"Had  that  essay  been  written  by  a  man,  by  a  physician 
or  by  any  other  scientist  (and  the  paragraph  about  the 
spirit  husband  omitted)  it  would  have  been  alright; 
but  coming  from  an  unmarried  woman,  neither  a  physician 
or  a  scientist,  and  with  that  claim  of  a  spirit  husband, 


4  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

there  is  no  explanation  possible  but  (1)  illicit  experience, 
which  is  denied  by  all  who  know  her,  or  (2)  insanity." 
That  is  to  say,  because  I  had,  by  means  of  knowledge 
gained  through  channels  of  which  he  was  ignorant, 
given  utterance  to  what  would  have  passed  unquestioned 
if  coming  from  a  scientist,  therefore,  I  must  be  insane. 
To  put  it  more  tersely,  a  diamond  of  truth  is  to  be  con- 
sidered genuine  only  when  discovered  by  A  or  B;  if 
the  same  diamond  be  discovered  by  X,  Y,  or  Z,  it  is  to 
be  considered  paste.  My  worst  offense,  however,  in 
his  eyes,  seemed  to  be  that,  as  a  woman,  I  was  out  of 
my  province  in  openly  preaching  marital  reform,  however 
high  the  ideals  advocated;  and,  as  my  sense  of  duty 
did  not  conform  with  his  conventional  prejudices,  he  felt 
justified  in  seeking  to  incarcerate  me  until  I  should 
recant  my  heresy. 

The    factors    in    this    case    were: 

1st.  An  unmarried  woman  of  known  reputation 
and  integrity. 

2nd.  An  essay  written  by  that  woman,  dealing  with 
the  marital  relation  along  lines  not  known  to  one  married 
couple  in  a  thousand. 

3rd.  A  claim  by  the  essayist,  that  she  wrote  from 
an  experience  gained  as  the  wedded  partner  of  a  ghost. 

To  ignore  any  one  of  these  factors  in  arriving  at 
a  theory  to  explain  the  other  two,  is  to  invalidate  that 
theory. 

Now,  there  is  one  creed  to  which  all  genuine  Free- 
thinkers are  faithful.  It  is  to  seek  the  truth,  wherever 
it  leads,  and  whatever  the  traditional  belief  upon  the 
subject  under  investigation.  This  being  so,  I  feel  that  I 
may  confidently  appeal  to  Freethinkers  to  consider  care- 
fully the  evidence  herewith  submitted  as  to  marital 
relations  on  the  Borderland. 

Last,  but  not  least,  I  appeal  to  Spiritualists,  The- 
osophists  and  Occultists  generally.  Psychics  and  sex, 
Laurence  Oliphant  has  shown,  are  so  interwoven  that  you 
cannot  take  up  one  wholly  separate  from  the  other. 
Only  an  occultist — and  somewhat  experienced  occultist, 


Theodore  Schroeder  5 

at  that — knows  anything  of  the  perils  which  await  the 
developing  psychic  on  the  Borderland.  The  Middle 
Ages  are  strewn  with  wrecked  lives — mainly  those  of 
illiterate  women,  who,  beginning  by  dabbling  with  magic 
in  an  empirical  fashion,  ended  by  confessing  themselves 
as  witches,  devil-haunted  in  body  as  well  as  in  mind, 
and  pledged  to  sins  against  nature.  Within  the  sheltered 
precincts  of  the  most  conservative  of  all  Christian  churches 
—the  Roman  Catholic — "Congressus  cum  daemonis" 
And  among  the  non-churchly  practisers  of  modern  oc- 
cultism we  too  often  find  a  tendency,  on  the  one  hand, 
not  only  to  justifiable  freedom,  but  also  to  unjustifiable 
looseness  of  life;  or  on  the  other  hand,  to  a  rigid  asceti- 
cism and  unnatural  suppression  of  the  sex  instinct  as 
impure.  All  these  things  point  to  the  necessity  for 
some  teaching  as  to  the  fundamental  principles  of  sex 
morality  on  the  Borderland — all  the  more,  as  spirit 
bridegrooms  and  spirit  brides  are  much  more  frequent 
than  is  generally  supposed.  Between  the  witch  who 
held  diabolic  assignations  as  a  devil's  mistress,  and  the 
psychic  who  has  been  trained  to  self-control  and  reverent 
wedlock  with  an  angel,  it  must  surely  be  admitted,  there 
is  a  wide  stretch  of  road.  Nevertheless,  both  are  on 
the  same  road,  and  the  downward  grade  is  very  slippery. 
In  so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  explore  this  road,  therefore 
I  think  it  my  duty  to  map  out  its  perils  and  its  safe- 
guards, as  help  to  my  fellow  occultists.  For,  no  matter 
on  what  obscure  by-path  a  psychic  starts,  he  or  she  can 
never  be  sure  of  not  coming  upon  this  road  unexpectedly, 
since  it  is,  as  I  have  said,  one  of  the  main  thoroughfares 
of  occultism. 

To  all  three  classes,  then — to  Occultists,  Freethinkers 
and  Christians — I  respectfully  offer  this  treatise  for 
consideration  in  the  hope  that  each  may  find  in  it  some- 
thing of  interest,  and,  mayhap,  of  profit. 


6  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

HEAVENLY  BRIDEGROOM. 

The  celestial  being,  who,  whether  as  God  or  angel, 
becomes  the  Heavenly  Bridegroom  of  an  earthly  woman, 
is  better  known  to  the  literature  of  the  Christian  Church 
than  most  people  who  are  not  theologians  are  aware. 
But  he  is  not  peculiar  to  Christianity.  He  has  been 
known  and  recognized  throughout  the  world  in  all  ages. 
The  woman  to  whom  he  comes,  is  as  a  rule,  distinguished 
for  her  purity  of  life.  Usually  she  is  a  virgin;  but  where 
already  married  and  a  mother,  she  must  be  recognized 
as  chaste,  or,  at  least,  there  must  be  no  stigma  of  im- 
purity upon  her  reputation.  I  am  not  at  the  present 
writing  aware  of  a  single  exception  to  this. 

Let  us,  however,  first  consider  the  Heavenly  Bride- 
grooms of  Christianity,  from  the  popular  orthodox  stand- 
point. 

There  are  two  Heavenly  Bridegrooms — the  Holy 
Spirit  and  Christ.  The  first  of  these,  the  Holy  Spirit, 
is,  according  to  the  New  Testament,  the  Being  through 
whose  agency  she  whom  the  Catholic  Church  delights 
to  honor  as  the  Blessed  Virgin  became  incarnate  with 
Jesus.  The  second  of  these,  Christ,  is  the  Being  honored 
alike  by  Catholics  and  by  Protestants  as  the  Bridegroom 
of  the  Church;  by  Catholics  also  as  the  mystic  Spouse 
of  the  ecstatic  and  purified  nun,  as  in  the  case  of  Saint 
Teresa;  and  by  Protestants  as  the  Bridegroom  of  the  Soul, 
in  that  popular  hymn  beginning: 

"Jesus,    Lover    of    my    soul, 
Let  me  to  Thy   bosom    fly!" 

I  once  attended  a  young  women's  revival  meeting 
at  Ocean  Grove,  held  under  the  auspices  of  an  evangelist 
who  was  noted  for  his  success  in  converting  young  girls. 
When  the  enthusiasm  flagged,  and  his  hearers  were  slow 
in  responding  to  his  appeals  to  "come  to  Christ"  he  started 
the  above  hymn,  and  the  ardor  of  his  fair  congregation 
was  at  once  kindled,  girl  after  girl  rising  to  publicly  give 
herself  to  Christ.  That  which  earnest  pleading  for  their 
soul's  salvation  had  failed  to  accomplish,  was  brought 


Theodore  Schroeder  7 

about  by  this  simple  suggestion  of  the  "Lover  of  the  Soul." 
In  thus  stimulating  the  untrained  emotions  of  the  maiden 
to  aspire  to  the  Divine  through  the  symbolism  of  earthly 
affection,  this  revivalist  not  only  showed  keen  insight 
into  human  nature,  but  he  was  also  instinctively  true  to 
the  teachings  of  the  innermost  truth  of  all  religion,  as 
I  hope  to  show  further  on. 

In  the  Bible  an  entire  book — the  Song  of  Solomon — 
is  given  up  to  expressing  the  raptures  of  the  Heavenly 
Bridegroom  and  his  Bride.  At  least,  this  is  the  interpre- 
tation which  the  Christian  Church  universally  puts  upon 
Canticles — the  reciprocal  joys  of  Christ,  the  Bridegroom, 
and  His  Bride,  the  Church.  Various  phases  of  the  sensu- 
ous relations  of  husband  and  wife  are  there  set  forth, 
in  figurative  but  unmistakable  terms  of  passion — passion 
which  the  Christian  world  has,  unfortunately,  long  since 
forgotten  how  to  utilize  as  the  most  important  means  of 
growth  toward  the  Divine. 

But  there  are  other  Heavenly  Bridegrooms  besides 
Christ  and  the  Holy  Spirit  referred  to  in  the  Bible.  In 
the  sixth  chapter  of  Genesis  may  be  found  a  curious 
text,  which  reads: 

"The  sons  of  God  saw  the  daughters  of  men,  that 
they  were  fair;  and  they  took  them  wives  of  all  that  they 
chose." 

"The  Septuagint  originally  rendered  the  words 
'Sons  of  God'  by  a  (angels  of  God) 

and  this  rendering  is  found  in  Philo,  de  Gigantibus, 
Eusebius,  Augustine  and  Ambrose.  This  view  of  Genesis 
VI.  1-4  was  held  by  most  of  the  early  fathers." 

(See  the  Book  of  Enoch,  translated  from  Professor 
Dillman's  Ethiopic  Text,  by  R.  H.  Charles,  Oxford,  1895.) 
In  fact,  in  the  Book  of  Enoch,  these  sons  of  God  are 
spoken  of  all  through  as  angels  who  wedded  earthly 
women;  and  it  is  further  stated  that  these  angelic  husbands 
broke  the  law,  living  in  depravity  with  their  earthly 
wives,  and  laying  the  foundation  of  evils  which  required 
the  Deluge  to  sweep  away.  Critical  scholarship  usually 
holds  these  angels  to  be  fallen.  But  St.  Augustine  protests 


8  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

against  this  very  saying:  "If  I  truly  believe  that  God's 
angels  could  never  fall  so  at  that  time." 

Nevertheless  we  find  in  the  Book  of  Enoch,  XV:  4, 
the  following: 

"Whilst  you  were  still  spiritual,  holy,  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  eternal  life,  you  have  defiled  yourselves  with 
women,  have  begotten  (children)  with  the  blood  of  flesh, 
and  have  lusted  after  the  blood  of  men,  and  produced 
flesh  and  blood,  as  those  produce  who  are  mortal  and 
short-lived." 

Here  we  see  that  the  angels,  whatever  their  after 
depravity,  were  "still  holy"  when  they  united  themselves 
as  heavenly  bridegrooms  with  earthly  women. 

However,  from  the  above,  and  from  other  texts  in 
Enoch,  it  would  appear  that  the  angels  are  blamed  for 
having  broken  the  laws  of  right  living  so  far  as  to  turn  the 
relations  existing  between  them  and  their  earthly  wives 
into  the  grossest  sensuality.  They,  rather  than  the  women, 
seem  to  be  credited  with  the  responsibility  for  evil-doing. 
But  it  is  noticeable  that  Genesis  is  silent  as  to  the  charac- 
ter of  these  angelic  bridegrooms,  while  it  lays  stress  on 
the  fact  that  the  imaginations  of  men's  hearts  were  evil 
continually,  as  though  this  last  were  the  real  cause  of 
the  wickedness  which  required  the  purification  of  the 
Deluge. 

Now,  let  us  remember  that  the  Book  of  Enoch, 
although  referred  to  in  Jude,  is  not  canonical.  It  belongs 
to  the  Hebrew  Apocalyptic  literature,  and  was  for  some- 
time lost,  save  for  a  few  fragments  preserved  in  reference 
made  by  ecclesiastical  writers.  However  valuable  to 
scholars,  it  is  uncanonical  and  thus  cannot  be  accepted 
by  Christians  as  the  Word  of  God.  Genesis,  on  the 
contrary,  is  accepted  by  Christians  today  as  the  Word 
of  God;  and  therefore,  the  total  omission  of  this  sacred 
book  to  bring  any  charge  against  these  angelic  "sons  of 
God,"  while  the  depravity  of  man  is  dwelt  upon  at  this 
period  of  the  world's  history,  is  not  a  matter  to  be 
passed  over  lightly  by  a  Christian. 


Theodore  Schroeder  9 

According  to  the  Christian  Scripture,  then,  it  was  not 
the  wickedness  of  the  angels  who  wedded  earthly  women, 
but  the  evil  imaginations  of  the  human  heart  that  brought 
about  the  punishment  of  the  Deluge.  And  in  this,  Genesis 
is  in  strict  accord  with  modern  theosophy — the  only 
philosophy,  so  far  as  I  know,  which  professes  to  know 
the  Alpha  and  Omega  of  occultism.  Theosophy  lays 
stress  on  the  punishment  which  awaits  the  black  sorcerer — 
the  earthly  being  who  uses  magical  powers  for  selfish 
or  impure  purposes.  But  Theosophy  is  not  alone  in  this 
teaching.  All  occultism,  by  whatever  name  it  is  called, 
however  imperfect  in  deductions,  learns  at  least  to  beware 
of  the  occultist  who  breaks  the  moral  law,  or  who, 
whether  wilfully  or  carelessly,  through  prejudice  or 
through  crafty  desire  to  advance  his  own  selfish  interests, 
closes  his  eyes  to  the  truth.  In  other  words,  clear  thinking 
and  correct  living  are  the  only  passport  to  trustworthiness 
in  an  occultist. 

I  have  said  that  all  occultism  learns  this  lesson  at 
last. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  many  psychical  phenomena 
which  at  first  sight  do  not  seem  to  require  any  special 
exercise  of  morality  on  the  part  of  the  percipient.  Such 
are  the  carefully  attested  phenomena  of  thought  trans- 
ference and  wraith-seeing  (especially  of  the  astral  form 
as  "double"  of  people  at  the  point  of  death  or  undergoing 
a  sudden  shock)  which  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research 
have  collated  from  a  multitude  of  sources,  in  the  case  of 
the  double  to  the  number  of  some  three  thousand.  The 
percipients  in  these  instances  are  probably  average  sort  of 
folks,  no  better  and  no  worse  than  their  fellows.  Yet 
they  see  or  they  hear  by  means  of  senses  which  are  still 
unrecognized  by  most  people,  and  which  are  therefore, 
termed  occult;  and  what  they  perceived  is  afterwards 
proved  to  be  an  actual  occurrence,  often  of  something 
taking  place  miles  away.  But  it  is  to  be  observed  that 
the  reliable  cases  collated  by  the  Psychical  Research 
Society  are  furnished  by  people  who  seem  to  be  clear- 
headed enough,  at  least,  to  form  definite  mental  concep- 


10  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

tions.  That  the  majority  of  these  cases  are  perceptions 
of  occurrences  in  this  earthly  life.  Where  the  thing  claim- 
ed as  seen  or  heard  by  the  percipients  no  longer  belongs 
to  this  world,  but  to  the  world  beyond  the  grave,  as 
in  the  case  of  visions  or  voices  of  those  now  deceased, 
the  phenomena,  collated  by  the  Society  of  Psychical 
Research  seem  not  only  to  be  but  they  also  seldom 
furnish  a  veridical  capricious  (i.  e.,  truth  telling)  communi- 
cation. 

In  the  case  of  Spiritualist  mediums,  professional  or 
amateur,  where  the  phenomena  assume  some  show  of 
regularity,  and  are  claimed  by  the  medium  to  come  en- 
tirely from  the  world  beyond  the  grave,  or  through  its 
aid,  one  always  has  to  be  on  one's  guard  against  the 
subtle  interpolation  among  otherwise  truthful  matter  of 
fantastic  or  misleading  statements  made  apparently  by 
the  communicating  spirits  themselves.  Occultists  in 
all  ages  have  invariably  assumed  such  statements  to  be 
the  work  of  "lying  spirits."  But  it  is  noticeable  that  the 
medium  of  correct  life  and  clearness  of  intellectual  con- 
ception is  less  troubled  by  such  lying  spirits  than  is  the 
medium  of  halting  intellect  or  morals.  This  of  itself 
should  indicate  to  the  thoughtful  student  of  occult 
phenomena  that  the  medium,  and  not  the  spirits  may  be 
to  blame  when  lying  communications  are  made. 

It  is  generally  assumed  that  the  false  or  fantastic 
remarks  so  subtly  interpolated  into  communications 
which  are  otherwise  truthful  and  uplifting  are  due  to 
evil  spirits  getting  temporary  control  of  the  medium. 
But  this  theory  presupposes  a  state  of  society  in  the  spirit- 
world  far  worse  regulated  than  with  us.  It  is  often  claimed, 
for  instance,  that  throngs  of  spirits  crowd  about  a  power- 
ful medium  as  a  crowd  of  people  on  earth  sometimes 
flock  about  a  telegraph  operator  in  times  of  excitement, 
each  man  selfishly  striving  to  get  his  message  sent  off 
first.  But,  even  in  our  imperfect  civic  life,  is  such  an 
occurrence  usual?  By  no  means.  Is  it  likely  that  in  a 
new  life  with  its  added  experience,  such  gross  violations 
of  law  and  order  should  be  allowed  to  continue  right 


Theodore  Schroeder  1 1 

along?  By  no  means.  Even  if  Heaven  be  not  as  Christ- 
ians believe,  the  abode  of  God  and  the  angels.  Even 
supposing  that  it  is  merely,  as  most  Spiritualists  claim, 
an  improved  edition  of  this  world;  it  is  but  logical  to 
infer  that  law  and  order  will  obtain  there  as  here,  and 
even  more  so,  because  the  tendency  of  human  society 
is  always  in  the  direction  of  systematizing  its  work  for 
mutual  convenience  of  its  members.  The  idea  of  a  good 
spirit  may  at  any  moment  be  temporarily  displaced  by 
an  evil  one,  and  that  the  laws  of  that  clearer  thought- 
world  beyond  the  grave  are  powerless  to  cope  with  this 
annoyance  is  absurd,  and  contrary  to  common  sense. 
The  fault  of  imperfect  communication  is  just  as  likely 
to  be  ours  as  others.  Let  us  see  to  it  that  the  lines  of 
telegraphic  communication  are  laid  in  correctness  of 
moral  living,  and  clearness  of  intellectual  conception, 
(on  our  side  of  the  abyss  of  death)  before  we  rashly 
assume  the  fault  to  be  theirs.  In  other  words,  if  they 
are  in  a  world  where  new  laws  of  matter  obtain,  as  they 
must  be,  if  they  live  at  all  after  the  death  of  the  body- 
to  communicate  intelligently  with  us  may  not  be  so  easy 
for  them  as  we  imagine.  They  may  find  themselves 
confronted  at  every  turn  by  such  difficulties.  Therein 
will  be  found  also  a  statement  requiring  an  occult  principle 
which  seems  not  only  to  forbid  spirits  from  communicating 
accurately  with  an  immoral  medium,  but  which  seems  to 
positively  enjoin  upon  them  the  utterance  of  all  the  foolish, 
depraved  and  even  criminal  ideas  that  the  medium  is 
willing  to  receive,  and  places  us  mentally  at  a  standpoint 
where  all  else  is  out  of  focus.  Thus  the  slightest  pre- 
judices on  any  given  subject  under  discussion  between 
our  celestial  visitors  and  ourselves  will  render  us  liable 
to  distorted  conceptions  of  their  ideas.  Such  is  the  law 
of  our  own  thought- world  here  on  the  earthly  plane;  and 
we  must  remember  that  they  have  left  our  plane  and 
entered  into  a  far  wider  thought- world  than  ours.  Hence 
the  need  for  rigidly  clear  thinking  on  the  part  of  every 
would  be  occultist.  And,  since,  as  has  been  well  said: 
"All  badness  is  madness,"  we  must  not  forget  to  also 


12  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

reckon  a  well  ordered  moral  life  as  among  the  attributes 
of  the  really  clear-headed  man  or  woman.  This  correct 
living  and  clear  thinking  go  hand  in  hand  as  vouchers 
for  accuracy  of  mediumship  between  this  world  and  the 
world  beyond  the  grave.  The  philosophy  which  deals 
with  the  subjective  consciousness,  as  an  important  factor 
in  fantastic  and  misleading  psychic  phenomena  from 
spirits,  will  be  found  set  forth  at  length.  Sufficient  to 
say  here  that  in  all  such  cases,  however  varied  the 
manifestations,  whether  of  an  abnormal  sub-consciousness 
or  of  outside  intelligences,  failure  to  think  clearly  as  to  live 
in  accordance  with  the  moral  requirements  of  self-control, 
duty,  aspiration  to  the  highest,  unselfishness  and  genuine 
purity,  will  be  found  responsible  for  the  disappointing 
psychic  manifestations  on  the  Borderland. 

When,  therefore,  the  Book  of  Enoch  blames  the 
angelic  sons  of  God,  rather  than  their  earthly  wives  for 
the  depravity  of  relations  said  to  exist  between  them  as 
spirits  and  mediums,  we  may  well  ask  if  this  be  not  a 
matter  on  which  the  writer  of  the  Book  of  Enoch  has 
carelessly  accepted  current  legends.  May  it  not  be  that  he, 
too,  believed  all  depraved  psychical  manifestations  to 
be  due  to  "evil  spirits"  and  that  he  was  totally  unaware 
of  the  occult  law  which  brings  these  things  to  pass  with 
a  medium  who,  ignorantly  but  persistently,  fails  in  clear 
thinking  or  correct  living  on  the  Borderland? 

Once  more  let  us  note  that  the  Book  of  Genesis, 
which  is  Canonical,  lays  stress  on  the  fact  that  at  this 
epoch  the  imaginations  of  men's  hearts  were  evil  con- 
tinually. 

When  the  Christian  Church  appeared  on  the  stage 
of  history,  it  found  several  varying  traditions  current 
about  those  sons  of  God  who,  so  many  centuries  before, 
had  taken  unto  themselves  wives  from  among  the  daught- 
ers of  men. 

One  after  the  other  the  early  Church  Fathers  wrestled 
with  these  traditions,  and  strove  to  fit  them  into  the 
Christian  theological  system.  Beginning  with  Paul,  we 
find  that  he  asserts  in  the  1st  Chapter  of  1st  Corinthians, 


Theodore  Schroeder  13 

that  a  woman  ought  to  be  veiled,  as  a  token  of  her  in- 
feriority and  dependence  upon  man,  and  he  adds:  'Tor 
this  cause  ought  the  woman  to  have  a  sign  of  authority 
on  her  head  because  of  the  angels?"  Irenaeus,  in  his 
work  Against  Heresies,  quoting  this  text  makes  it  read, 
"A  woman  ought  to  have  a  veil  upon  her  head  because 
of  the  angels."  From  Tertullian  we  learn  what  this 
means.  He  says  in  his  work  Against  Marcion  (V.  18.): 

"The  apostle  was  quite  aware  that  spiritual  wicked- 
ness (Ephesians,  VI,  12.)  had  been  at  work  in  heavenly 
places  when  angels  were  entrapped  into  sin  by  the 
daughters  of  men . ' ' 

In  sundry  places  Tertullian  waxes  wroth  over  this 
supposed  "entrapping"  of  angels  by  earthly  women. 
In  a  treatise  On  ike  Veiling  of  Virgins — written  for  the 
purpose  of  compelling  all  unmarried  women  to  be  veiled 
as  were  the  married,  one  reason  being  that  they  were 
"Brides  of  Christ" — he  speaks  his  mind  thus: 

"So  perilous  a  face,  then,  ought  to  be  shaded,  which 
has  cast  stumbling-stones  even  so  far  as  heaven;  that  when 
standing  in  the  presence  of  God,  at  whose  bar  it  stands 
accused  of  the  driving  of  the  angels  from  their  (native) 
confines,  it  may  blush  before  the  other  angels  as  well; 
and  may  repress  that  former  evil  liberty  of  its  head— 
(a  liberty)  now  to  be  exhibited  not  even  before  human 
eyes." 

On    Veiling    of    Virgins,    VII. 

The  author  of  the  Testaments  of  the  Twelve  Patri- 
archs is,  if  anything,  more  severe.  He  remarks: 

"Hurtful  are  women,  my  children;  because,  since 
they  have  no  power  or  strength  over  the  man,  they 
act  subtilly  through  outward  guise  now  they  may  draw 
him  to  themselves;  and  whom  they  overcome  by  strength, 
him  they  overcome  by  craft  ******** 
By  means  of  their  adornment,  they  deceive  first  their 
minds,  and  instil  the  poison  by  the  glance  of  their  eye, 
and  then  they  take  captive  by  their  doings,  for  a  woman 
cannot  overcome  a  man  by  force  *****  my  children 
******  command  your  wives  and  your  daughters 


14  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

that  they  adorn  not  their  heads  and  their  faces;  because 
every    woman    who    acteth    deceitfully    in    these    things 
hath   been  reserved  to   everlasting   punishment.     For  thus 
they   allured   the   Watchers   before   the   flood." 
Testament    of    Reuben,    5. 

He  adds  that  these  angelic  Watchers  manifested  as 
apparitions  to  the  women  at  the  times  of  their  union 
with  their  earthly  husbands;  "and  the  women,  having 
in  their  minds  desire  towards  their  apparitions,  gave 
birth  to  giants,  for  the  Watchers  appeared  to  them  as 
reaching  even  unto  heaven." 

Here  we  see  an  attempt  to  account  for  the  resulting 
progeny  of  "giants"  by  such  simple  and  natural  means 
as  Jacob  made  use  of  when  he  desired  to  produce  "ring- 
straked,  speckled  and  spotted"  goats  (Genesis  XXX). 
No  mention  is  made  of  marital  relations  being  estab- 
lished directly  between  earthly  women  and  angels.  Else- 
where the  same  writer  (Testament  of  Naphthali,  3)  he 
speaks  of  these  same  Watchers  as  having  "changed  the 
order  of  their  nature,  whom  also  the  Lord  cursed  at  the 
flood,  and  for  their  sakes  made  desolate  the  earth." 

This  follows  a  reference  to  Sodom,  the  writer  seeming 
to  trace  a  similarity  between  the  two  causes  of  the  two 
punishments.  Justin  Martyr,  however,  makes  the  offence 
of  the  sinning  angels  to  consist  rather  in  ambition  for 
power  over  mankind.  He  says: 

"God  *****  committed  the  care  of  men  and  of  all 
things  under  heaven  to  angels  whom  He  appointed  over 
them.  But  the  angels  transgressed  this  appointment, 
and  were  captivated  by  love  of  women,  and  begat  children 
who  are  those  that  are  called  demons;  and  besides,  they 
afterwards  subdued  the  human  race  to  themselves, 
partly  by  magical  writings,  and  partly  by  fears  and  the 
punishments  they  occasioned  and  partly  by  teaching 
them  to  offer  sacrifices,  and  incense,  and  libations,  of 
which  things  they  stood  in  need  after  they  were  enslaved 
by  their  lustful  passions;  and  among  man  they  sowed 
murders,  wars,  adulteries,  intemperate  deeds,  and  all 
wickedness." 


Theodore  Schroeder  15 

These  things,  according  to  Justin,  the  poets  (unaware 
that  they  were  due  to  sinning  angels)  ignorantly  ascribed 
to  God  (Jupiter),  and  to -those  who  were  called  his  broth- 
ers, Neptune  and  Pluto,  and  to  the  Olympian  deities 
in  general. 

Lactantius  lays  the  blame  principally  upon  Satan. 
Speaking  of  the  repeated  efforts  of  the  serpent  ("who 
from  his  deeds  received  the  name  of  devil,  that  is,  ac- 
cuser or  informer")  to  corrupt  mankind,  he  adds: 

"But  when  God  saw  this,  He  sent  His  angels  to 
instruct  the  race  of  men,  and  to  protect  them  from  all 
evil.  He  gave  these  a  command  to  abstain  from  earthly 
things,  lest,  being  polluted  by  any  wily  accuser,  while 
they  tarried  among  men,  allured  these  also  to  pleasures, 
so  that  they  might  defile  themselves  with  women.  Then, 
being  condemned  by  the  sentence  of  God,  and  cast  forth 
on  account  of  their  sins,  they  lost  both  the  name  and  the 
substance  of  angels.  Thus,  having  become  ministers  of 
the  devil,  that  they  might  have  a  solace  of  their  ruin 
they  betook  themselves  to  the  ruining  of  men,  for  whose 
protecting  they  had  come." 

Lactantius  Epitome  of  the  Divine  Institutes.  Chap. 
XXVII. 

Thus  from  angels  the  devil  makes  them  to  become 
his  Satellites  and  attendants.  But  they  who  were  born 
from  these,  because  they  were  neither  angels  nor  men, 
but  bearing  a  kind  of  mixed  (middle)  nature,  were  not 
admitted  into  hell  as  their  fathers  were  not  into  heaven. 
Thus  there  came  to  be  two  kinds  of  demons,  one  of  heaven, 
the  other  of  the  earth. 

Lactantius,  The  Divine  Institutes,   Book  II,   15. 

(To    BE     CONTINUED.) 


HEAVENLY  BRIDEGROOMS* 

BY  THEODORE  SCHROEDER 

AND  IDA  C. 

The   Sons   of   God  saw  the  daughters  of  men  that  they 

were  fair;  and  they  took  them  wives  of  all  that 

they  chose. 

Genesis  6:2. 

IN  one  place  Justin  Martyr  speaks  of  "evil  demons" 
who  "in  times  of  old,  assuming  various  forms,  went 
in  unto  the  daughters  of  men."  Elsewhere  he  also  speaks 
of  these  demons  manifested  as  apparitions  and  mis-led  boys 
as  well  as  women.  He  said  that  they  "showed  such  fearful 
sights  to  men,  that  those  who  did  not  use  their  reason  in 
judging  of  the  action  done  were  struck  with  terror  ***** 
and  not  knowing  that  these  were  demons  they  called  them 
girls."  Justin  evidently  looks  upon  the  angelic  bridegroom 
as  demoniacal  from  the  start.  Clement  of  Alexandria  says 
that  the  angels  "renounced  the  beauty  of  God  for  a  beauty 
which  fades  and  so  fell  from  heaven  to  earth." 

Athenagoras  asserts  that  the  angels  "fell  into  impure 
love  of  virgins."  But  Tertullian  calls  attention  to  the 
fact  that  sacred  Scripture  terms  these  angels  husbands] 
and  he  argues  at  length  very  ably  to  show  that  we  are  bound 
to  infer  from  Scripture  that  the  earthly  wives  of  these 
angelic  husbands  were  virgins,  pure  and  undefiled,  at  the 
time  of  their  marriage.  From  which  it  is  evident  that  these 
marriages  were  acceptable  to  virtuous  women,  and  therefore, 
we  may  infer,  not  an  infringement  of  the  civil  law  of  the 
time  or  the  sex  which  is  proverbially  conservative  would  never 
have  contributed  so  largely  to  these  unions  from  among  its 
best  members.  Nor  could  they  have  been  unions  which 

*  Continued  from  November,  1916. 

(17) 


18  Theodore  Sckroeder 

transgressed  the  laws  of  nature,  or  the  resulting  offspring 
would  not  have  been  so  well  developed  physically  (as  giants) 
nor  mentally  (as  "mighty  men  which  were  of  old,  men  of 
renown.") 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  in  his  Miscellanies  (Stromaba,) 
appears  to  blame  the  sinning  angels  in  addition  because  they 
"told  to  the  women  the  secrets  which  had  come  to  their 
knowledge;  while  the  rest  of  the  angels  concealed  them,  or, 
rather,  kept  them  against  the  coming  of  the  Lord."  These 
"secrets,"  we  learn  from  several  of  the  Christian  Fathers, 
were  the  arts  of  metallurgy,  dyeing,  the  properties  of  herbs, 
astronomy  and  astrology,  etc.  Reasoning  from  this  as- 
sumption that  certain  sciences  and  industrial  arts  were 
imparted  to  mankind  from  sinful  angels,  we  need  not  wonder 
that  Tertullian  pertinently  asks: 

"But,  if  the  self -same  angels  who  disclosed  both  the 
material  substance  of  this  kind  and  their  charms — of  gold,  I 
mean,  and  lustrous  stones — and  taught  men  how  to  work 
them,  and  by  and  by  instructed  them,  among  their  other 
[instructions]  in  [the  virtue  of]  eye-lid  powder  and  the  dyeing 
of  fleeces,  have  been  condemned  by  God,  as  Enoch  tells  us, 
how  shall  we  please  God  while  we  joy  in  the  things  of 
those  [angels]  who,  on  these  accounts,  have  provoked  the 
anger  and  vengeance  of  God?" 

Tertul.   on  Female   Dress.   II.    10. 

This  thought  seems  to  have  been  to  him  a  matter  of 
serious  moment,  for  he  enlarges  upon  it,  as  follows  when 
speaking  of  the  dress  and  ornamentation  of  women: 

"For  they,  withal,  who  instituted  them  and  assigned, 
under  condemnation,  to  the  penalty  of  death — those  angels 
to  wit,  who  rushed  from  heaven  on  the  daughters  of  men; 
so  that  this  ignominy  also  attached  to  women.  For  when 
to  an  age  much  more  ignorant  [than  ours]  they  had  disclosed 
certain  well-concealed  material  substances,  and  several  not 
well-revealed  scientific  arts — if  it  is  true  that  they  had  laid 
bare  the  operations  of  metallurgy,  and  had  divulged  the 
natural  properties  of  herbs,  and  had  promulgated  the  powers 
of  enchantment,  and  had  traced  out  every  curious  art,  even 
to  the  interpretation  of  the  stars — they  conferred  properly 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  19 

and  as  it  were  peculiarly  upon  women  that  instrumental 
mean  of  womanly  ostentation,  the  radiances  of  jewels  where- 
with necklaces  are  variegated,  and  the  circlets  of  gold  where- 
with the  arms  were  compressed,  and  the  medicaments  of 
archil  with  which  wools  are  colored,  and  that  black  powder 
itself  wherewith  the  eyelids  and  eyelashes  are  made  prominent. 
What  is  the  quality  of  these  things  may  be  declared  mean- 
time, even  at  this  point,  from  the  quality  and  condition 
of  their  teachers;  in  that  sinners  could  never  have  either 
shown  or  supplied  anything  conducive  to  integrity,  unlawful 
lovers  anything  conducive  to  chastity,  renegade  spirits 
anything  to  the  fear  of  God.  If  [these  things]  are 
to  be  called  teachings,  ill  masters  must  of  necessi- 
ty have  taught  ill;  if  as  wages  of  lust,  there  is  nothing  base 
of  which  the  wages  are  honorable.  But  why  was  it  of  so 
much  importance  to  show  these  things  as  well  as  to  confer 
them?  Was  it  that  women  without  material  causes  of 
splendor,  and  without  ingenious  contrivances  of  grace,  could 
not  please  men,  who,  while  still  unadorned  and  uncouth, 
and — so  to  say — crude  and  rude,  had  moved  [the  mind  of] 
angels?  Or  was  it  that  the  (angelic)  lovers  would  appear 
sordid  and — through  gratuitous  use — contumelious,  if  they 
had  conferred  no  [compensating]  gift  on  the  women  who 
had  been  enticed  into  connubial  connection  with  them? 
But  these  questions  admit  of  no  calculation.  Women  who 
possessed  angels  [as  husbands]  could  desire  nothing  more; 
they  had,  forsooth,  made  a  grand  match.  Assuredly  they 
who  of  course,  did  sometimes  think  whence  they  had  fallen, 
and,  after  the  heated  impulses  of  their  lusts,  looked  up 
toward  heaven,  thus  requitted  that  very  excellence  of  women, 
natural  beauty,  as  [having  proved]  a  cause  of  evil,  in  order 
that  their  good  fortune  might  profit  them  nothing  but  that, 
being  turned  from  simplicity  and  sincerity  they  together 
with  [the  angels]  themselves,  might  become  offensive  to 
God.  Sure  they  were  that  all  ostentation  and  ambition, 
and  love  of  pleasing  by  carnal  means,  was  displeasing  to 
God." 

Tertullian   on   Female   Dress,   Chap.    II. 


20  Theodore  Schroeder 

Cyprian,  when  blaming  virgins  for  wearing  jewels, 
necklaces  and  wool  stuffs  colored  with  costly  dyes  (On  the 
Dress  of  Virgins,  14.)  likewise  remarks: 

" All  which  things  sinning  and  apostate  angels 

put  forth  by  their  arts,  when,  lowered  to  the  contagions 
of  earth,  they  forsook  their  heavenly  vigor." 

When  we  remember  that  early  Christianity  sets  its 
face  like  a  flint  against  all  delights  of  the  senses  and  that 
this  extreme  reaction  of  the  spiritual  against  the  sensuous 
has  largely  shaped  our  social  customs  of  today,  we  begin  to 
see  how  important  and  far-reaching  were  these  opinions  of 
the  Church  Fathers  that  feminine  adornment  had  been 
taught  by  angels  who  had  sinned  in  wedding  earthly  women, 
and  that  it  was  therefore  a  sinful  thing  in  that  it  has  eman- 
ated from  a  depraved  source.  Some  of  the  theories  built  upon 
this  assumption  are  quite  curious.  Here  are  a  few: 

"That  which  He  Himself  has  not  produced  is  not 
pleasing  to  God,  unless  He  was  unable  to  order  sheep  to 
be  born  with  purple  and  sky-blue  fleeces:  If  He  was  able, 
then  plainly  He  was  unwilling,  what  God  willed  not,  of 
course,  ought  not  to  be  fashioned." 

Tertullian  on  Female  Dress,  I.  8. 

"For  it  was  God,  no  doubt,  who  showed  the  way  to 
dye  wools  with  the  juices  of  herbs  and  the  humous  of 
conchs:  It  had  escaped  Him,  when  He  was  bidding  the 
universe  come  into  being,  to  issue  a  command  for  (the 
production  of)  purple  and  scarlet  sheep." 

Tertul.  on  Female  Press,  II.  10. 

Why  should  she  walk  out  adorned?  Why  with  dressed 
hair,  as  if  she  either  had  or  sought  for  a  husband?  Rather 
let  her  dread  to  please  if  she  is  a  virgin  ********* 
It  is  not  right  that  a  virgin  should  have  her  hair  braided 
for  the  appearance  of  her  beauty. 

Cyprian  on  the  Dress  of  Virgins,   5. 

"You  are  bound  to  please  your  husbands  only.  But  you 
will  please  them  in  proportion  as  you  take  no  care  to  please 
others.  Be  ye  without  carefulness,  blessed  [sisters];  no 
wife  is  "ugly  to  her  own  husband."  She  "pleased"  him 
enough  when  she  was  selected  [by  him  as  his  wife];  whether 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  21 

commended  by  form  or  by  character.  Let  none  of  you 
think  that  if  she  abstain  from  the  care  of  her  person  [compo- 
sitione  sui] ;  she  will  incur  the  hatred  and  aversion  of  husbands. 
Every  husband  is  the  exactor  of  chastity;  but  beauty  a 
believing  [husband]  does  not  require,  because  we  are  not 
captivated  by  the  same  graces  which  the  Gentiles  think 
to  be  graces." 

Tertul,  on  Female  Dress,  Book  IT,  Chap.  IV. 

"Do  ye  0  matrons  flee  from  the  adorning  of  vanity 
such  attire  is  fitting  for  women  who  haunt  the  brothels. 
******  To  a  wife  approved  of  her  husband,  let  it 
suffice  that  she  is  so  not  by  her  dress,  but  by  her  good 
disposition.  The  instructions  of  Commodianus  in  favor 
of  Christian  Discipline  against  the  Gods  of  the  Heathens,  59." 

Let  us  remember  that  these  and  similar  teachings  by 
the  early  Christian  Fathers  have  laid  the  foundation  of 
our  present  marriage  customs.  The  theory  that  a  woman 
sins  in  adorning  herself  to  please  a  husband  (whether  present 
or  prospective),  and  this  theory  is  still  indescribably  popular 
among  devout  Christians. 

Commodianus  ascribes  the  teaching  of  "arts,  ***** 
and  the  dyeing  of  wool,  and  everything  which  is  done," 
not  to  the  angels  but  to  the  giant  progeny.  And  he  adds: 

"To  them,  when  they  died,  man  erected  images.  But 
the  Almighty,  because  they  were  of  an  evil  seed,  did  not 
approve  that,  when  dead,  they  should  be  brought  back 
from  death.  Whence  wandering  they  now  subvert  many 
bodies,  and  it  is  such  as  these  especially  that  ye  this  day 
worship  and  pray  to  as  gods." 

The  Instructions  of  Commodianus  in  favor  of  Christian 
Discipline,  against  the  Gods  of  the  Heathen. 

The  author  of  the  Clementine  Homilies  records  a  tradi- 
tion concerning  these  gigantic  "wanderers"  on  the  borders 
of  Ghostland  which  seems  to  him  that  they  were  not  unable 
to  beget  children:  After  speaking  of  the  Deluge  he  says: 

"Since,  therefore,  the  souls  of  the  deceased  giants  were 
greater  than  human  souls,  inasmuch  as  they  also  excelled 
their  bodies,  they,  as  being  a  new  race,  were  called  also 
by  a  new  name.  And  to  those  who  survived  in  the  world 


22  Theodore  Schroeder 

a  law  was  prescribed  to  God  through  an  angel,  how  they 
should  live.  For  being  bastards  in  race,  of  the  fire  of  angels 
and  the  blood  of  woman,  and  therefore  liable  to  desire  a 
certain  race  of  their  own,  they  were  anticipated  by  a  certain 
righteous  law." 

Clementine  Homilies,  VIII,   18. 

Inasmuch  as  the  Deluge  had  already  destroyed  every 
one  on  the  earth  except  Noah  and  his  family,  we  see  that 
the  author  cannot  mean  by  those  who  survived  in  the  world 
any  giants  still  in  the  flesh.  Moreover,  the  decree  which 
followed  and  which  prescribed  that  they  are  to  have  power 
over  only  those  human  beings  who  break  the  moral  law  and 
practice  magic  would  indicate  these  "giants"  had  then 
entered  upon  what  Theosophists  would  call  astral,  and  from 
the  paragraph  quoted  above,  it  is  evidently  taken  for  granted 
that  these  astral  giants  would  propagate  their  kind.  This 
is  an  important  point — the  testimony  of  a  Christian  Father 
of  a  tradition  that  human  beings  (not  created  angels)  who 
had  once  inhabited  bodies,  could  beget  children  on  the  plane 
of  the  astral  unless  prevented  by  the  direct  prohibition 
of  Heaven.  If  it  be  objected  that  the  author  refers  to 
giants  still  in  earthly  form  when  he  speaks  to  "those  who 
survived  in  the  world"  I  am  sure  that  the  statement 
follows  a  remark  about  the  Deluge  and  that  in  that  case 
the  surviving  giants  must  have  been  Noah  and  his  family. 
This  view,  however,  is  absurd,  when  we  consider  that  the 
decree  forbade  the  giants  to  assume  power  over  any  but 
the  human  race.  If  Noah  and  his  family  were  the  surviving 
giants,  where  would  be  the  sense  in  promulgating  such  a 
decree  to  them?  This  same  author  gives  an  account  of 
the  doings  of  the  angelic  fathers  of  these  giants  which 
reminds  one  strongly  of  the  spirit  seances  of  the  late  Rev. 
Stainton  Moses,  when  under  conditions  which  precluded  all 
fraud  or  illusion,  tiny  pearls  and  other  precious  stones 
suddenly  materialized  before  the  sitters.  Here  is  the  tradi- 
tion recorded  by  the  Christian  Fathers: 

"For  of  the  spirits  who  inhabit  the  heaven,  the  angels 
who  dwell  in  the  lowest  region,  being  grieved  at  the  in- 
gratitude of  man  to  God,  asked  that  they  might  come 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  23 

into  the  life  of  man,  that,  really  becoming  man,  by  more 
intercourse  they  might  convict  those  who  had  acted  un- 
gratefully towards  Him,  and  might  subject  every  one  to 
adequate  punishment.  Then,  therefore,  their  petition  was 
granted,  they  metamorphosed  themselves  into  every  nature; 
for,  being  of  a  more  god-like  substance,  they  are  able  easily 
to  assume  any  form.  So  they  became  precious  stones, 
and  goodly  pearl,  and  the  most  beauteous  purple,  and 
choice  gold,  and  all  matter  that  is  held  in  most  esteem. 
And  they  fell  into  the  hands  of  some,  and  into  the  bosoms 
of  others,  and  suffered  themselves  to  be  stolen  by  them. 
They  also  changed  themselves  into  beasts  and  reptiles 
and  fishes  and  birds,  and  into  whatsoever  they  pleased. 
These  things,  also  the  poets  among  yourselves,  by  reason 
of  fearlessness,  sing,  as  they  befell,  attributing  to  one  the 
many  and  diverse  doings  of  all." 

Clementine    Homilies,    VIII,    12. 

(Then,  "having  assumed  these  forms,  they  convicted 
as  covetous  those  who  stole  them,  and  changed  themselves 
into  the  nature  of  man,  in  order  that,  living  holily,  and  show- 
ing the  possibility  of  so  living  they  might  subject  the  un- 
grateful to  punishment."  However,  "having  become  in  all 
respects  men,  they  also  became  subject  to  masculine  in- 
firmities and  fell.") 

Does  it  not  seem  as  though  we  had  here  a  survival  of 
Animism — a  state  of  mind  frequent  among  savages,  children 
and  animals  in  which  an  inanimate  object  which  moves 
without  visible  cause  or  manifests  in  any  peculiar  way  is 
thought  to  be  alive.  A  horse  is  often  terrified  by  a  piece 
of  paper  blown  in  front  of  him,  evidently  he  takes  it  for 
a  live  creature.  Savages  speak  of  the  sun  and  moon  as 
living  individuals  because  of  their  apparently  voluntary 
journeys  through  the  sky;  [among]  the  Kukis  of  Southern 
Asia  *****  if  a  man  was  killed  by  a  fall  from  a  tree, 
his  relatives  would  take  their  revenge  by  cutting  the  tree 
down,  scattering  it  in  chips.  A  modern  King  of  Cochin, 
China,  when  one  of  his  ships  sailed  badly,  used  to  put  it 
in  the  pillory  as  he  would  any  other  criminal.  (Bastian, 
OestL,  Asein,  Vol.  1,  p.  51.)  In  classical  times,  the  stories 


24  Theodore  Schroeder 

of  Xerxes  flogging  the  Hellespont  and  Cyrus  draining  the 
Gyndes  occur  as  cases  in  point,  but  one  of  the  regular 
Athenian  legal  proceedings  is  a  yet  more  striking  relic. 
A  court  of  justice  was  held  at  the  Prytaneum,  to  try  any 
inanimate  object,  such  as  an  axle,  a  piece  of  wood  or  stone, 
which  had  caused  the  death  of  anyone  without  proved 
human  agency,  and  this  wood  or  stone,  if  condemned,  was 
with  solemn  form  cast  beyond  the  border.  The  spirit 
of  this  remarkable  procedure  reappears  in  the  old  English 
law  (repealed  in  the  present  reign),  whereby,  not  only  a 
beast  that  kills  a  man,  but  a  cart-wheel  that  runs  over  him, 
as  a  tree  that  falls  on  him,  kills  him,  is  dead  and  is  given 
to  God,  *  *  *  *  forfeited  and  sold  for  the  poor  *  *  *  *  *. 
The  pathetic  custom  of  "telling  the  bees"  when  the  master 
or  mistress  of  a  house  dies,  is  not  unknown  in  our  own 
country.  In  Berlin,  Germany,  the  idea  is  more  fully  worked  out ; 
and  not  only  is  the  sad  message  given  to  every  bee-hive  in 
the  garden  and  every  beast  in  the  stall,  but  every  sack  of 
corn  must  be  touched  and  everything  in  the  house  shaken, 
that  they  may  know  the  master  is  gone.  And  we  all  know 
that  even  an  intelligent  nineteenth  century  man  is  not  above 
administering  an  angry  kick  to  a  chair  against  which  he  has 
bruised  himself. 

Now  the  author  of  the  Clementine  Homilies  seems  to 
have  similarly  lighted  on  an  instance  of  Animism  in  con- 
nection with  gold,  pears,  precious  stones,  etc.  In  pre- 
historic times  this  tradition,  rational  and  intelligible,  may 
suppose  that  these  precious  articles  had  moved  or  other- 
wise behaved  as  though  endowed  with  life  in  the  ancient 
times  to  which  the  tradition  relates.  Could  it  be  that 
they  suddenly  appeared  to  those  prehistoric  gazers,  coming 
from  no  one  knew  where,  and  moved  about  by  unseen  hands, 
as  tables  are  lifted,  bells  rung,  banjos  played  or  flowers 
materialized  at  a  modern  spiritual  seance,  evidently  report- 
ed to  have  come  by  occult  means,  supposed  to  be  heavenly.  The 
people  who  witnessed  the  phenomena  were  probably  not  ac- 
customed to  clear  headed  and  intelligent  investigation  of  such 
phenomena,  see  at  once  it  was  an  Animistic  explanation 
such  as  is  given  in  the  Clementine  Homilies.  As  to  the 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  25 

frightened  horse,  and  to  the  ignorant  savage,  inanimate 
things  seem  to  be  alive,  so  may  the  precious  objects  which 
materialized  at  those  prehistoric  seances  have  seemed  to  the 
beholders  to  be  living  creatures,  in  as  much  as  they 
sped  through  the  air  without  .visible  support.  If  alive,  they 
surely  (so  would  argue  the  witnesses)  must  be  angelic  beings 
since  they  were  said  to  come  from  heaven  and  the  attendant 
phenomena  of  the  seance  no  doubt  would  increase  the  awe 
with  which  these  '  'angels"  were  received  and  treasured.  An 
"angel"  is  simply  a  vehicle  for  a  message  in  the  original 
signification.  Let  us  glance  in  passing  at  the  accounts 
of  materializing  through  the  psychic  power.  In  this  sense 
a  pearl  materialized  through  the  psychic  power  of  so  reliable 
a  modern  medium  as  the  Rev.  Stainton  Moses,  plainly  by 
occult  means  might  be  called  an  "angel" — i.  e.,  the  means 
by  which  the  message  from  the  unseen  reached  the  sitters. 
In  after  times  when  the  word  angel  had  come  to  be  special- 
ized as  a  personal  envoy  from  Heaven,  the  old  tradition  about 
the  pearls  and  precious  stones  which  had  evidently  come 
as  "angels"  (vehicles  for  a  heaven-sent  message)  whenever 
told  would  probably  be  adopted  to  the  specialized  meaning 
and  it  would  be  said  as  above,  that  personal  beings  trans- 
formed into  these  inanimate  things.  First,  as  to  the  mani- 
festations through  the  Rev.  Stainton  Moses  lately  declared 
in  his  journal  occurs  the  following  entry: 
Tuesday,  September  9th,  1873. 

"Same  conditions.  Plentiful  scent  as  before.  Sixteen 
little  pearls  were  put  on  the  table,  six  having  been  pre- 
viously given  during  the  day.  Mrs.  Speer  and  I  were 
writing  at  the  same  table,  and  a  pearl  was  put  on  my  letter 
as  I  was  writing.  After  that  I  saw  a  spirit  standing  by  Mrs. 
Speer,  and  was  told  that  it  was  Mentor,  who  had  put  a 
pearl  on  Mrs.  Speer's  desk.  After  that  four  others  came. 
They  seemed  to  drop  on  the  table,  just  as  I  have  seen  them 

with    Mrs.    A h.     We    have    in     all     twenty-one     now. 

They  are  small  seed  pearls,  each  perforated." 

A  week  later,  there  is  this  entry: 

"When  we  broke  up  we  found  a  little  heap  of  pearls 
was  put  before  each.  One  hundred  and  thirty-nine  little 


26  Theodore  Schroeder 

pearls  have  been  brought  to  us,  one  hundred  and  ten  in  the 
last  two  days." 

(This,  it  appears  from  another  witness,  occurred  in 
daylight.) 

Dr.   Speer   (referred  to   by   Miss   X.   in   Borderland   as 
"a  highly  intelligent  and   by   no   means   credulous   witness") 
gives  a  striking  instance  of  the  materialization  of  a  precious 
object : 
December  31st,   1872. 

"A  very  successful  seance.  A  blue  enamel  cross  was 
brought,  no  one  knew  whence,  placed  before  my  wife,  who 
was  told  to  wear  it." 

Mrs.   Speer  testifies  as  follows: 
Ventnor,   November  29th,    1893. 

"I  wish  to  state  that  the  most  convincing  evidences 
of  spirit-power  always  took  place  when  hands  were  held. 

"Other  manifestations  occurred,  often  in  light,  such  as 
raps,  raising  of  table,  scent,  musical  sounds,  and  showers 
of  pearls  *****.  Two  cameos  were  carved  in  light 
while  we  were  dining." 

Before  leaving  this  part  of  the  subject,  it  may  be  well 
to  quote  the  following  by  Miss  X.  in  Borderland  (Miss  X., 
I  would  add  is  by  no  means  a  spiritualist,  but  is  distinctly 
opposed  to  the  Spiritistic  hypothesis): 

"Mr.  Stainton  Moses  has  for  many  years  been  one  of 
the  most  important  witnesses  for  Spiritualism.  The  fact 
that,  like  Professor  Crookes  and  Alfred  Russell  Wallace,  he 
was  a  gentleman,  a  scholar,  and  a  man  of  recognized  position 
and  character,  was,  to  say  the  least,  a  good  letter  of  intro- 
duction *****  j£  may  ke  sa{^  once  for  an  that  it  is 

unnecessary  to  insist  on  the  absolute  sincerity  of  Mr.  Stainton 
Moses.  It  is  a  point  which  has  never  been  so  much  as 
raised.  His  life  has  been  of  a  kind  not  to  be  called  in 
question — obscure  without  mystery,  dignified  without  pedan- 
try, lived  in  the  sight  of  just  that  class  of  the  public  which 
demands  the  strictest  respectability  of  conduct,  the  most 
unequivocal  correspondence  between  life  and  profession. 
As  a  clergyman  he  was  beloved  by  his  parishioners,  as  a 
schoolmaster  he  was  respected  by  his  boys,  as  a  personal 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  27 

friend  he  commanded  the  confidence  and  esteem  of  all  his 
intimates." 

May  it  not  be  that  the  phenomena  recorded  by  the 
author  of  the  Clementine  Homilies  are  essentially  the  same 
in  kind  as  those  referred  to  above  in  the  case  of  the  Rev. 
Stainton  Moses? 

St.  Augustine,  considering  the  possibility  of  occult  sex 
relations  between  earthly  women  and  beings  from  the  un- 
seen world,  remarks: 

"The  Scriptures  plainly  aver  that  the  angels  have 
appeared  both  in  visible  and  palpable  figures.  And  seeing 
it  is  so  general  a  report,  and  so  many  aver  it  either  from 
their  own  experience  or  from  others,  that  are  of  indubitable 
honesty  and  credit,  that  the  sy Ivans  and  fauns,  commonly 
called  incubi,  have  often  injured  women,  and  that  certain 
devils  from  the  Gauls  call  "Duses,"  do  continually  practice 
this  *****,  and  tempt  others  to  it,  which  is  affirmed 
by  such  persons,  and  with  such  confidence,  that  it  were 
impudence  to  deny  it.  I  dare  not  venture  to  determine 
anything  here;  whether  the  devils  being  embodied  in  air 
(for  the  air  being  violently  moved  is  to  be  felt)  can  suffer 
this  lust,  or  move  it  so  as  the  women  with  whom  they 
commix,  may  feel  it;  yet  do  I  firmly  believe  that  God's 
angels  could  never  fall  so  at  that  time." 

St.  Augustine's  City  of  God,  XV.,  23. 

Notice  the  perplexity  of  St.  Augustine  as  a  logician. 
He  cannot  deny  that  occult  sex  relations  exist  on  the  Border- 
land, the  testimony  to  this  is  too  wide  spread  and  of  too 
reliable  a  character.  But,  (we  can  imagine  him  saying)  how 
reconcile  these  phenomena  with  the  belief  that  the  inhabitants 
of  the  world  beyond  the  grave  are  immaterial,  vapory, 
mist-like  beings? 

How  can  such  a  hazy,  ethereal  creature  as  a  ghost  produce 
objective  sensations  of  touch  upon  an  earthly  being?  And 
if  possible — as  he  ingeniously  supposes,  by  such  means  as  air 
becomes  perceptible  to  us  when  violently  put  in  motion — 
how  reconcile  such  phenomena  with  the  belief  that  sex  is 
impure,  and  that  it  does  not  exist  in  the  world  beyond  the 


28  Theodore  Schroeder 

grave?    How    could    God's    angels    ever    fall    so?    It    were 
impossible. 

But  St.  Augustine  evidently  starts  from  two  hypotheses 
—the  unsubstantiability  of  ghosts  and  the  impurity  (foot- 
note, as  will  be  seen  by  a  perusal  of  the  quotation  in  full,) 
and,  therefore,  non-existence  of  sex,  neither  of  which  two 
hypotheses  has  ever  been  definitely  proven.  As  a  logician 
therefore,  he  is  at  fault,  and  I  have  already  shown  the 
danger  of  starting  from  mistaken  premises  when  dealing 
with  occult  phenomena.  The  two  hypotheses,  however, 
were  not  peculiar  to  St.  Augustine.  They  were,  and  are, 
the-  common  property  of  the  majority  of  mankind.  But  it 
does  not  follow  that  they  are  correct:  and  the  psychic  who 
rashly  assumes  their  truth  to  start  with  (through  prejudice 
or  because  other  people  think  so)  may  expect  to  be  deluded, 
and  to  come  upon  all  sorts  of  fantastic,  and  possibly,  diabolical 
manifestations.  Such  is  the  occult  law.  Start  with  a  false 
premise  or  with  a  premise  which  you  have  not  investigated 
with  scrupulous  care,  and  you  are  certain  to  get  phenomena 
of  either  a  misleading  or  a  depraved  character. 

But  all  the  Christian  Fathers  did  not  accept  the  possi- 
bility of  bridegrooms  from  the  unseen  world.  There  were 
then,  as  now,  Materialist  minds  which  disbelieved  in  ghosts. 
Alexander,  Bishop  of  Lycopolis,  endeavored  to  explain 
away  angelic  bridegrooms  as  myths,  thus: 

"When  the  Jewish  history  relates  that  angels  came 
down  to  hold  intercourse  with  the  daughters  of  men  *  *  *  * 
this  saying  signifies  that  the  nutritive  powers  of  the  soul 
descended  from  heaven  to  earth." 

On  the  Tenants  of  the  Manicheans,  XXV. 

Hence  the  "injuring"  of  women  by  incubi — to  which 
St.  Augustine  refers,  an  injuring  either  wholly  subjective 
and  illusory,  or,  if  objectively  real,  was  brought  about  in  part 
by  the  woman's  ignorance  of  the  occult  requirements  for 
correct  living  and  clear-headedness  on  the  Borderland,  in 
part  by  her  failure  to  thus  live  and  think  on  the  earthly 
plane. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  know  his  authority  for  this. 
Rationalistic  theories  cannot  rest  as  do  folklore  traditions, 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  29 

upon  a  mere  say-so;  they  must  be  supported  either  by 
testimony  or  by  argument.  Otherwise,  we  are  obliged  to 
dismiss  them  as  the  whimsical  fancies  of  a  solitary  individual. 

Origen  says  he  will  "persuade  those  who  were  capable 
of  understanding  the  meaning  of  the  prophet,  that  even 
before  us  there  was  one  who  referred  this  narrative  to  the 
doctrine  regarding  souls,  which  became  possessed  with  a 
desi  e  for  the  corporeal  life  of  men"  and  thus  in  metaphorical 
language  he  said  was  termed  "daughters  of  men."  But 
Origen  does  not  give  his  authority,  nor  advance  any  argument 
in  support  of  this  explanation. 

Julius  Africanus  suggests  another  Rationalistic  ex- 
planation, but  is  candid  enough  to  give  it  as  his  own  notion. 
He  says: 

"When  men  multiplied  on  the  earth,  the  angels  of 
heaven  came  together  with  the  daughters  of  men.  In  some 
copies  I  find  'the  sons  of  God.'  What  is  meant  by  the 
Spirit,  in  my  opinion,  is  that  the  descendants  of  Seth  are 
called  the  sons  of  God  on  account  of  the  righteous  men 
and  patriarchs  who  have  sprung  from  him,  even  down  to 
the  Saviour  Himself;  but  that  the  descendants  of  Cain 
are  named  the  seed  of  men,  as  having  nothing  divine  in 
them,  on  account  of  the  wickedness  of  their  race  and  the 
inequality  of  their  nature,  being  a  mixed  people,  and  having 
stirred  the  indignation  of  God." 

This  ingenious  theory  has  been  eagerly  grasped  at  by 
succeeding  Christian  writers  who  disbelieve  in  the  sub- 
stantiality of  ghosts.  So  able  a  commentator  in  modern 
times,  however,  as  Delitzsch  (On  Genesis)  decides  against 
this  view,  and  quotes  various  authorities  which  I  give 
elsewhere.  He  also  quotes  Keil  as  demonstrating  that  two 
of  the  Hebrew  words  in  the  text  in  Genesis  show  that 
"the  contraction  of  actual  and  lasting  marriages"  is  meant. 

Julius  Africanus,  indeed,  seems  to  have  had  doubts 
as  to  whether  the  current  tradition  about  angelic  bridegrooms 
might  not  be  true  after  all,  for  he  adds  directly  upon  the 
heels  of  the  above  theory: 

"But  if  it  is  thought  that  these  refer  to  angels,  we 
must  take  them  to  be  those  who  deal  with  magic  and  jug- 


30  Theodore  Schroeder 

glery,  who  taught  the  women  the  motions  of  the  stars  and 
the  knowledge  of  things  celestial,  by  whose  power  they 
conceived  the  giants  as  their  children,  by  whom  wickedness 
came  to  its  heights  on  the  earth,  until  God  decreed  that 
the  whole  race  of  the  living  should  perish  in  their  impiety 
by  the  Deluge." 

Extant  Fragments  of  the  Five  Books  of  the  Chronogra- 
phy  of  Julius  Africanus,  in  Georgius  Syncellus,  Chron.  p.  19, 
al  15,  ed.  Paris,  11  Venet. 

Nevertheless,  Rationalists  and  Materialists  are  in  the 
minority  among  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  as  regards  this 
subject.  The  majority  accepted  the  accounts  in  Genesis 
and  Enoch  at  their  face  value. 

To  briefly  sum  up  the  majority's  views  of  the  early 
church  on  this  matter: 

1.  Angels  of  a  superior  order  did  come  into  the  earthly 
life — whether   (a)   because  God  sent  them,  or  (b)  because  they 
were   moved   with   indignation    at    the   ingratitude   of   men 
toward  God  and  came  voluntarily  in  order  to  reconcile  God 
and  man,  or  (c)  because  they  were  enticed  by  women  on 
the  earth,   the  traditions  do  not  agree. 

2.  Having   come   into   this   earthly   life,    they   became 
either  the  lovers  or  the  husbands  of  women,  whether  beguil- 
ed thereto  in  part  by  the  Devil,  or  wholly  by  the  women  or, 
partially    or    wholly    by    their    own    desires,    the    traditions 
again  do  not  agree.     One  tradition,  as  we  have  seen,  hints  at 
the  sin  of  Sodom;  and  an  interference  on  the    astral    plane 
with   the   rights   of   earthly   husbands;   others   hint   at  illicit 
amours ;  but  Tertullian  demonstrates  unanswerably  from  sacred 
Scripture  that  the  angels  were  the  wedded  husbands  of  the 
daughters  of  men,   and  that   these  daughters  were  virginal 
at  the  time  of  wedding  their  angelic  lovers. 

This  was  not,  however,  all  their  sin.  One  tradition, 
as  we  have  seen,  makes  a  vague  allusion  to  the  sin  of 
Sodom  in  connection  with  the  intercourse  of  angels  with 
women. 

3.  That   an   angelic   woman   should   seek  in  honorable 
marriage,    especially    an    earthly    woman,    it    would    appear, 
was  reckoned  a  sin.     When  asked  why,   we  find  that   the 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  31 

Church  Fathers,  one  and  all,  treated  marriage  as  a  mere 
expedient.  Tertullian  said  that  the  reason  why  'marrying' 
is  good,  is  that  'burning'  is  worse.  Minncius  Felix  (Octavius 
XXXI)  remarks  that  "with  some  even  the  modest  intercourse 
of  the  sexes  causes  a  blush."  Methodius  has  an  entire  book 
devoted  to  an  argument  offered  by  ten  virgins  against 
wedlock  rnd  in  behalf  of  perpetual  virginity.  Origen  says: 
"God  has  allowed  us  to  marry,  because  all  are  not  fit  for  the 
higher,  that  is,  the  perfectly  pure  life.  Cyprian  says  that, 
"Chastity  maintains  the  first  rank  in  virgins,  the  second 
in  those  who  are  continent,  the  third  in  the  case  of  wed- 
lock." He  also  says: 

"What  else  is  virginity  than  the  glorious  preparation 
for  the  future  life?  Virginity  is  of  neither  sex.  Virginity  is 
the  continuance  of  infancy.  Virginity  is  the  triumph  over 
pleasures.  Virginity  has  not  children;  but  what  is  more, 
it  has  contempt  for  offspring;  it  has  not  fruitfulness,  but 
neither  has  it  bereavement;  blessed  that  it  is  free  from  the 
pain  of  bringing  forth,  more  blessed  still  that  it  is  free  from 
the  calamity  of  the  death  of  children.  What  else  is  virginity 
than  the  freedom  of  liberty?  It  has  no  husband  or  master. 
Virginity  is  freed  from  all  affections;  it  has  not  given  up  to 
marriage,  nor  to  the  world,  nor  to  children." 

Cyprian,  Of  the  Discipline  of  Chastity,  7. 

Justin  Martyr  exults  that  "many,  both  men  and  women 
of  the  age  of  sixty  and  seventy  years,  who  have  been  dis- 
ciples of  Christ  from  their  youth,  continue  in  immaculate 
virginity." 

In  a  spurious  fragment  credited  to  "Hippolytus,  the 
Syrian  Expositor  of  the  Forum,"  the  writer  refers  to  an 
ancient  Hebrew  MS.,  which  tells  of  Noah  being  commanded 
by  God  to  stake  off  each  male  animal  in  the  ark  from  the 
corresponding  female.  The  other  and  principal  object  of 
marriage  which  runs  through  all  nature  from  protoplasmic 
cells  up  to  man — of  mutual  exchange  of  strength  and  mutual 
happiness,  seems  to  have  been  totally  ignored  by  the  early 
Christian  Fathers.  Lactantius  held  that  it  is  impossible 
the  two  sexes  could  have  been  instructed  except  for  the  sake 
of  generation.  Justin  Martyr  says  frankly: 


32  Theodore  Schroeder 

"Neither  marry  at  first,  for  no  other  object  than  to 
rear  children,  or  else  abstaining  from  marriage,  continue  to 
live  in  a  state  of  continence." 

Apology  I,  37. 

He  notes  with  approval  a  Christian  youth  who  begged 
P^elix,  the  governor  of  Alexandria,  for  permission  to  be  made 
a  eunuch  by  a  physician,  in  order  to  attest  his  continence 
to  the  world.  (Felix,  however,  had  the  good  sense  to  refuse.) 
To  such  an  extent  was  this  unnatural  loathing  for  wedlock 
carried,  that  Constantine  found  it  judicious  to  remove  the 
old-time  penalties  against  celibacy,  because  of  the  many 
Christians  who  continued  celibates  from  motives  of  religion. 

Since  marriage  on  natural  grounds  was  thus  depreciated 
by  the  early  Church  as  impure  when  occurring  between 
earthly  men  and  women,  we  need  not  wonder  that  she  viewed 
with  horror  the  very  thought  of  wedlock  with  an  angel  in 
as  much  as  angels  were  supposed  to  be  above  earthly  weak- 
nesses. Having  thus  starteed  from  a  false  premise,  i.  e., 
that  marital  passion  cannot  be  pure  in  God's  sight,  there  was 
no  other  deduction  to  be  made  regarding  these  love-matches 
between  angels  and  women  but  that  they  were  sinful. 

4.  But,  according  to  the  Christian  Fathers,  the  angels 
committed  other  sins,  in  addition  to  seeking  a  woman  in 
honorable  marriage.  They  actually  endeavored  to  beautify 
the  world  into  which  they  had  come,  and  to  make  men  wiser 
and  happier  by  teaching  them  various  arts  and  sciences. 
One  might  have  thought  this  a  cause  for  gratitude;  but  the 
Church  Fathers,  having  started  from  a  false  premise,  were 
logically  bound  to  deduce  the  theory  which  Tertullian  did — 
that  as  these  spirit  husbands  were  fallen  angels,  what  they 
taught  could  not  possibly  be  conducive  either  to  integrity, 
chastity,  or  the  fear  of  God.  Therefore,  dress  and  adorn- 
ment and  the  industrial  arts  of  dyeing  and  metallurgy  were 
sinful,  and  consequently,  displeasing  to  the  Almighty.  Very 
different  is  the  view  taken  by  a  more  modern  writer,  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  the  author  of  the  Religio  Medici  who, 
advocating  the  doctrine  of  this  celestial  guardianship  over 
marriage  on  earth,  observes:  "I  do  think  that  many  myster- 
ies ascribed  to  our  own  inventions,  have  been  the  courteous 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  33 

revelation  of  spirits;  for  these  noble  essences  in  heaven  bear 
a  friendly  regard  unto  their  fellow  natures  on  earth." 

Apparitions,  pp.  3-4.  R  cv.  Bourchier  Wrey  Savile, 
London,  1880. 

5.  Ambition  plays  a  prominent  part  in  the  traditions,  it 
will  be  noticed.  It  is  said  that  these  angels  were  ambitious 
for  earthly  power  and  exacted  libations  and  sacrifices;  and 
also  that  they  were  the  beings  whom  the  heathen  ignorantly 
supposed  to  be  gods. 

But  if  the  reader  will  recall  what  I  have  said  about 
the  misleadings  in  spirit  manifestations  when  the  psychic 
starts  from  a  false  premise,  he  will  understand  how  possible 
it  is  that  we  have  to  deal  here  with  subjective  illusions, 
and  not  objective  realities;  and  that  the  lower  estimate 
in  which  these  angelic  visitors  came  to  be  held  was  due  entire- 
ly to  the  failure  of  psychics  to  keep  the  laws  of  correct 
moral  living  or  common  sense  and  his  weaknesses  and 
vanities  and  superstitions  will  be  played  upon  ad  libitum. 
As  for  the  giant  offspring  said  to  have  resulted  from  these 
unions — offspring  which  in  the  male  line  became  evil-doers, 
and  finally  demons  on  the  astral  plane — if  the  reader  will 
consider  that  necessity  to  which  I  have  referred  for  correct 
living  and  clear  thinking  on  both  sides  of  the  abyss  of  death, 
if  the  bridge  of  communication  is  to  hold,  •  he  will  see  that 
if  these  "giants"  continued  to  influence  the  world  from  the 
astral  plane  they  could  not  be  evil  demons,  but  must  be 
beneficent  helpers  of  mankind.  But  there  is,  I  think,  grave 
doubt  as  to  whether  such  offspring  ever  resulted  from  these 
unions  between  angels  and  earthly  women,  as  the  reader 
will  see  when  I  come  to  speak  of  the  occult  laws  governing 
such  unions.  Nevertheless,  there  is  something  to  be  said  on 
both  sides,  and  we  should  do  well  to  reserve  our  judgment 
until  all  the  evidence  is  before  us. 

We  have  seen  that  Commodianus  says  that  these  giants 
are  the  gods  to  whom  the  heathen  ignorantly  prayed.  Justin 
Martyr,  mindful  of  certain  similarities  between  the  stories 
told  of  those  same  heathen  gods  and  the  Scriptural  account 
of  Jesus,  advances  the  theory  that  the  demons  had  some 
imperfect  perception  of  the  coming  Messiah,  gleaned  from 


34  Theodore  Schroeder 

the  Old  Testament  prophecies,  and  that  they  tried  to  fore- 
stall Christianity  by  ascribing  Christ's  possible  attributes  in 
advance  to  the  gods. 

To  BE  CONTINUED. 


HEAVENLY  BRIDEGROOMS* 

BY  THEODORE  SCHROEDER 

AND  IDA  C. 

"The   Sons  of  God  saw  the  daughters  of  men  that  they 

were  fair;  and  they  took  them  wives  of  all  that 

they  chose." 

Genesis  6:2. 

"The  demons,  then,  hearing  these  prophetic  words  [Genesis 
49:  10,  11,]  asserted  that  Bacchus  was  born  the  son  of  Jupiter; 
they  ascribed  to  him  also  the  invention  of  the  vine,  and  in  the 
celebration  of  his  mysteries  led  an  ass  in  procession,  and  taught 
that  Bacchus  was  torn  in  pieces  and  taken  up  into  heaven." 
Justin  Martyr's  Apology,  I.  71. 

Justin  also  draws  a  comparison  between  some  of  these 
gods  and  Christ,  to  show  that  Christianity  claims  no  more  for 
its  god  than  did  the  heathen  for  those  whom  they  called  "Sons 
of  Jove."  He  says: 

"When  we  affirm  that  the  Word,  which  is  the  first-begotten 
of  God,  was  born  without  carnal  knowledge,  even  Jesus  Christ 
our  Master,  and  that  he  was  crucified,  and  rose  again  and 
ascended  into  heaven,  we  advance  no  new  thing  different  from 
what  is  maintained  respecting  those  whom  ye  call  sons  of 
Jupiter.  For  ye  well  know  how  many  sons  your  approved 
writers  attribute  to  Jupiter;  Mercury,  the  word  of  interpreta- 
tion and  teacher  of  all  men;  Esculapius,  who  was  a  physician, 
and  yet  struck  with  lightning  and  taken  up  into  heaven;  Bacchus, 
who  was  torn  in  pieces;  Hercules,  who  burned  himself  upon  the 
pile  to  escape  his  torments;  Castor  and  Pollux,  the  sons  of  Leda; 
Perseus  the  son  of  Danae;  and  Bellerophon,  born  of  human  race, 
and  carried  away  upon  the  horse  Pegasus  ******  Neither 

^Continued  from  February  1916. 

(37) 


38  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

is  it  necessary  that  I  should  relate  to  you,  who  already  know  well, 
of  what  kind  were  the  actions  of  each  of  those  who  were  called 
the  sons  of  Jupiter;  I  need  only  say,  that  the  writings  in  which 
they  are  recorded,  tend  only  to  corrupt  and  pervert  the  minds 
of  those  who  learn  them;  for  all  take  a  pride  in  being  the  imitators 
of  the  gods  ******  gut  jf  we  say  tkat  he  [Jesus]  was 
begotten  of  God,  in  a  manner  far  different  from  ordinary 
generation,  being  the  Word  of  God,  as  we  have  before  said, 
let  this  be  considered  a  correspondence  with  your  own  tenets, 
when  ye  call  Mercury  the  word  who  bears  messages  from  God. 
And  if  any  one  objects  to  us  that  He  was  crucified;  this  too 
is  a  point  of  correspondence  with  those  whom  ye  call  the  sons 
of  Jupiter,  and  yet  allow  to  have  suffered  ******  Again, 
if  we  affirm  that  he  was  born  of  a  virgin;  let  this  be  considered 
a  point  in  which  he  agrees  with  what  you  (fabulously)  as- 
cribe to  Perseus.  And  whereas  we  say  that  he  made  those 
whole,  who  were  lame,  palsied  and  blind  from  their  birth,  and 
raised  the  dead;  in  this  too  we  ascribe  to  him  actions  similar 
to  those  which  are  said  to  have  been  performed  by  Esculapius. 
Justin  Martyr's  Apology  I,  28,  29,  30. 

We  thus  see  that  the  heathen  gods  and  heroes  whose 
father  was  Jupiter,  the  Christian  Messiah  whose  father  was 
the  holy  spirit  and  the  traditional  "giants"  whose  fathers 
were  angels,  were,  in  the  eyes  of  at  least  one  Church  Father 
but  different  aspects  of  the  same  underlying  principle — the 
possibility  of  marital  union  between  dwellers  in  the  unseen 
world  and  dwellers  upon  the  earth,  for  the  purpose  of  begetting 
children.  Today,  however,  we  look  upon  the  story  of  virgin 
born  Perseus  as  fabulous.1  But  the  ancient  heathen  opponents 
of  Justin  seem  to  have  accorded  a  scant  respect  to  the  story  of 
the  virgin-born  Jesus  as  we  do  to  the  story  of  virgin-born 
Perseus.  Now  to  laugh  to  scorn  the  birth  of  Perseus  from  the 
occult  union  of  God  with  one  virgin,  and  then  to  accept  with- 
out question  the  birth  of  Jesus  from  the  occult  union  of  God 
with  another  virgin,  is  somewhat  inconsistent.  On  strictly 
logical  grounds,  if  one  story  be  false,  so  may  the  other  be  false ; 
if  one  be  true,  so  may  the  other  be  true.  But  Perseus  is  only 
one  of  many  virgin-born  heroes  or  gods.  We  find  these 


Theodore  Schroeder  39 

children  of  a  visible  earthly  mother  and  an  invisible,  celestial 
mysterious  father,  the  world  over,  in  all  ages. 

There  was  Buddha,  the  child  of  Maya  and  a  celestial  being 
god  who,  in  the  form  of  a  white  elephant,  entered  her  side, 
or  according  to  De  Gingnes  (See  Higgins  Anacalypsis  I,  157) 
his  mother  conceived  by  a  ray  of  light  without  defilement. 

The  Hindu  Chrishna  was  born  of  a  chaste  matron,  who,  though 
a  wife  and  a  mother,  is  always  spoken  of  as  the  Virgin  Devaki. 
Chrishna,  by  the  way,  has  many  attributes  in  common  with 
Kama,  the  East  Indian  god  of  love,  corresponding  to  the  Latin 
Cupid.  He  is  represented  as  black — a  symbolism  to  which 
I  will  return  later  on. 

The  Egyptian  God  Ra  was  born  from  the  side  of  his 
mother,  "but  was  not  engendered." 

The  Mayas  of  Yucatan  had  a  virgin-born  god,  named 
Zama. 

Among  the  Algonquin  Indians  we  find  the  tradition  of 
a  great  teacher,  by  name  Michabou,  who  was  born  of  a  celestial 
Manitou  and  an  earthly  mother. 

"Upon  the  altars  of  the  Chinese  temples  were  placed 
behind  a  screen,  an  image  of  Shin-moo,  or  the  'Holy  Mother,' 
sitting  with  a  child  in  her  arms,  in  an  alcove,  with  rays  of  glory 
around  her  head,  and  tapers  constantly  burning  before  her." 
Rev.  Joseph  B.  Gross,  Heathen  Religion,  60,  quoted  in  Bible 
Myths,  p.  327. 

In  ancient  Mexico, 

"The  Virgin  Chimalman,  also  called  Sochiquetzal  or 
Suchiquecal,  was  the  mother  of  Quecalcoatle,  [evidently  the 
same  as  Quetalcoatl,  who  was  crucified  as  a  Saviour  for  the 
Mexicans,  as  Jesus  was  for  the  Christian  world.]  In  one 
representation  he  is  shown  hanging  by  the  neck  holding  a  cross 
in  his  hands.  His  complexion  is  quite  black.  Sochiquetzal 
means  the  lifting  up  of  roses.  [This  is  really  our  Sukey, 
and  the  Greek  4>uxe,  Psyche,  which  means  the  soul,  and 
which  was  appropriately  applied  to  the  bride  of  the  spirit- 
lover,  Cupid.]  Eve  is  called  Ysnextli,  and  it  is  said  she  sinned 
by  plucking  roses.  But  in  another  place  these  roses  are  called 
Fruta  del  Arbor,  [arbol?]  ****** 


40  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

"The  Mexican  Eve  is  called  Suchiquecal.  A  messenger 
from  heaven  announced  to  her  that  she  should  bear  a  son, 
who  should  bruise  the  serpent's  head.  He  presents  her  with  a 
rose.  This  was  the  commencement  of  an  Age,  which  was 
called  the  Age  of  Roses. 

[Is  this  the  age  when  angels  became  the  husbands  of  pure- 
minded  women — an  age  fitly  symboled  by  the  rose,  the  flower 
of  perfect  love?  Note,  also,  the  resemblance  between  this 
tradition  and  the  Christian  tradition,  concerning  the  angel's 
offering  Mary  a  lily-branch  at  the  Annunciation.  Evidently, 
these  are  two  different  aspects  of  the  same  symbolism.  | 

Higgins,  continuing,  says: 

"All  this  history  the  Monkish  writer  is  perfectly  certain 
is  the  invention  of  the  Devil,"  and  Justin  Martyr  strove  to  ac- 
count for  the  analogy  between  the  story  of  Christ  and  the  story 
of  Bacchus  by  supposing  that  demons  had  imitated  the  Christian 
Scriptures  in  advance,  so  totally  unaware  was  he  that  both  stories 
had  the  same  esoteric  meaning  to  the  initiate.  "Torquemada's 
Indian  history  was  mutilated  at  Madrid  before  it  was  published. 
Suchiquecal  is  called  the  Queen  of  Heaven.  She  conceived  a 
son,  without  connection  with  man,  who  is  the  God  of  Air  *  *  *  * 

"The  Mohammedans  have  a  tradition  that  Christ  was 
conceived  by  the  smelling  of  a  rose."  Anacalypsis  II.  32,  33. 

In  the  Finnish  epic  of  the  Kalevala  there  is  a  heroine  by 
the  name  of  Mariatta  (from  Marja,  "berry")  who  becomes 
pregnant  through  unwittingly  eating  a  berry — the  berry 
here  playing  a  similar  part  to  the  rose  referred  to  above  in 
the  Mohammedan  tradition.  She  goes  from  one  to  another 
person,  vainly  seeking  a  place  in  which  to  bring  forth  her  child. 
At  last  she  is  referred  by  one  household  to  the  stable  of  "the 
flaming  horse  of  Hisi;"  and  she  then  appeals  to  the  horse  of 
Hisi  in  the  following  words: 

"Breathe,    O    sympathizing    fire-horse, 
Breathe  on  me,  the  virgin-mother! 
Let  thy  heated  breath  give  moisture, 
Let  thy  pleasant  warmth  surround  me, 
Like  the  vapor  of  the  morning; 
Let  this  pure  and  helpless  maiden 
Find  a  refuge  in  thy  manger!" 


Theodore  Schroeder  41 

Observe  that,  although  the  mother  of  an  illegitimate 
child,  she,  like  all  the  mothers  of  such  children  when  their 
father  is  divine  or  mysterious,  is  "pure,"  the  "virgin-mother," 
etc. 

These  virgin-mothers  are  not  copies  of  the  Christian  Mary 
Most,  if  not  all  of  them,  were  known  long  before  the  days  of 
Christianity. 

The  mother  of  the  Siamese  'Somona  Cadom'  was  im- 
pregnated by  sun-beams,  another  form  of  Danae's  golden  shower. 
She  was  called  Maha  Maria  or  Maya  Maria,  i.  e.,  "the  Great 
Mary."  And  this  brings  out  some  curious  coincidences  in 
name  among  virgin-mothers.  Thus: 

Marietta  of  the  Kalevala  has  already  been  referred  to 
above. 

The  mother  of  Hermes  or  Mercury  was  Myrrha  or  Maia. 

Maya,  the  mother  of  Buddha,  is  identical  in  name  with 
the  Hindu  goddess  Maya,  who  is  represented  as  walking  upon 
the  waters,  with  her  peplum  teeming  with  animals,  to  show 
her  fecundity.  Maya  is  also  a  well-known  Hindu  term  for 
'illusion." 

The  month  of  May  (so  nearly  like  the  name  of  Maia) 
was  sacred  to  some  of  the  virgin-goddesses  of  ancient  times, 
as  it  is  now  to  Mary,  the  Mother  of  Jesus.  The  Christian 
Virgin  Mary  was  also  called  Myrrha;  and  she  is  still  called 
Santa  Maria  in  Southern  Europe  and  in  Mexico.  The  title 
bestowed  on  her  of  "Star  of  the  Sea" — a  title  given  to  the 
Egyptian  Virgin-mother,  Isis,  perhaps  two  thousand  years 
earlier — shows  how  close  a  resemblance  tradition  and  folklore 
have  traced  between  both  of  these  virgin-mothers  and  the 
ancient  genitrix  of  the  waters.  Also,  the  Latin  "mare"  and 
the  French  "mer"  for  "the  sea,"  and  the  French  "mere"  for 
'mother"  bear  a  striking  resemblance  to  the  name  Mary  in 
sound.  And  Venus  was  born  from  the  foam  of  sea  presiding 
divinity  of  love  between  the  sexes.  She  is  credited  with  having 
been  "indulgent  Venus"  to  a  mortal  man — Anchises,  to  whom  she 
bore  the  hero  of  Virgil's  Aeneid,  a  Borderland  espousal,  this 
though  here  it  is  the  wife  and  not  the  husband  who  comes 
from  the  invisible  world. 


42  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

The  Apocryphal  Gospels  speak  of  the  Virgin  Mary's 
being  brought  up  as  an  orphan,  in  the  temple,  and  they  refer 
to  her  as  an  obedient  and  pure-minded  maiden,  accustomed 
to  holding  daily  converse  with  angels.  That  she  should  have 
been  called  by  the  same  root-name  as  these  ancient  virgin- 
mothers,  is,  therefore,  the  less  remarkable,  if  we  consider 
the  possibility  of  her  having  been  trained  in  the  temple  by 
the  priests  as  an  initiate  in  the  sacred  mysteries,  and  of  her 
having  passed  the  various  ordeals  so  successfully  as  to  entitle 
her  to  be  called  by  the  name  sacred  to  the  type  of  womanhood 
accounted  worthy  to  sustain  marital  relations  on  the  Border- 
land. 

In  some  cases  it  would  appear  that  ambitious  princes 
or  other  designing  politicians  of  ancient  days  did  not  scruple 
to  avail  themselves  of  the  current  belief  in  the  possibility  of 
divine  paternity,  when  it  would  serve  their  purpose.  It  was 
an  open  secret  among  the  Greeks  that  Alexander  the  Great 
had  not  hesitated  to  do  this,  on  the  occasion  of  his  march  into 
Egypt  and  Suria.  When  the  oracle  at  the  temple  of  Jupiter 
Arnmon  (doubtless  for  a  bribe)  declared  Alexander  to  be  the 
son  of  Jupiter,  saying  that  this  god,  in  the  form  of  a  serpent, 
had  manifested  to  Alexander's  mother. 

The  serpent  is,  in  ancient  sex  worship,  a  well-known 
symbol  of  the  phallus,  and  therefore,  of  the  creative  fatherhood. 
It  appears  in  several  stories  of  divinely  begotten  children. 

Scipio  Africanus  was  another  politician  who  availed  him- 
self of  the  popular  belief  in  these  matters,  it  would  seem. 
"There  is  no  doubt,"  remarks  Higgins  in  his  Anacalypsis,  I, 
212,  213,  "that  he  aimed  at  the  sovereignty  of  Rome,  but  the 
people  were  too  sharp-sighted  for  him."  A.  Gelline  says,  'The 
wife  of  Publius  Scipio  was  barren  for  so  many  years  as  to  create 
a  despair  of  issue,  until  one  night,  when  her  husband  was  absent, 
she  discovered  a  large  serpent  in  his  place,  and  was  informed 
by  soothsayers  that  she  would  bear  a  child.  In  a  few  days  she 
perceived  signs  of  conception,  and  after  ten  months  gave  birth 
to  the  conqueror  of  Carthage."2 

The  Emperor  Augustus  was  said  to  have  been  the  result 
of  a  mysterious  connection  of  his  mother  with  a  serpent  in 
the  temple  of  Apollo. 


Theodore  Schroeder  43 

Ovid  in  his  Fasti  records  a  story  that  Servius  Tulliuswas 
a  mysterious  shape,  claiming  to  be  a  vulcan,  which  appeared 
to  the  mother,  Ocrisia,  among  the  ashes  of  the  altar,  when  she 
was  assisting  her  mistress  (Ocrisia  was  a  captive)  in  the  sacred 
rite  of  pouring  a  libation  of  wine  upon  the  altar. 

Pythagoras,  who  lived  more  than  five  hundred  years 
before  Christ,  was  said  to  be  the  offspring  of  Apollo.  He  was 
born  on  a  journey,  his  father  (or  rather,  his  mother's  earthly 
husband)  having  traveled  up  to  Sidon  on  business.  Pythais, 
the  mother,  had  been  beloved  by  a  ghostly  personage  who 
claimed  to  be  the  god  Apollo  Afterwards  this  same  apparition 
showed  itself  to  the  husband,  informing  him  of  the  parentage 
of  the  coming  child,  and  bidding  him  to  have  no  connection 
with  his  wife  until  after  its  birth. 

A  similar  event  is  said  to  have  transpired  in  the  case 
of  Plato,  Apollo  his  father  also.  His  mother  was  Perictione,  a 
virgin,  who  was  betrothed  to  one  Ariston  at  the  time.  In 
this  case,  also,  Apollo  appeared  to  inform  the  earthly  lover  of 
the  child's  paternity.  Higgins,  relating  this  tradition,  adds: 

"On  this  ground,  the  really  very  learned  Origen  defends 
the  immaculate  conception  [Higgins  evidently  refers  not  to 
the  Roman  Catholic  Doctrine  of  Mary's  stainlessness  by 
that  term  signified,  but  to  the  conception  of  Jesus]  assigning, 
also,  in  confirmation  of  the  fact,  the  example  of  Vultures 
(Vautours)  who  propagate  without  the  male."  (!  !) 

The  Vulture  was  an  accompaniment  of  Hathas,  the  Egyptian 
Venus;  and  it  would  therefore  seem  as  though  Origen  had 
unwittingly  stumbled  on  a  bit  of  folklore.  Graves,  in  his  Six- 
teen Crucified  Saviours,  remarks  (I  know  not  on  what  authority, 
but  give  his  remark  rather  for  its  suggestiveness  than  as  a 
vouched  for  historical  fact): 

"Many  are  the  cases  noted  in  history  of  young  maidens 
claiming  a  paternity  for  their  male  offspring  by  a  God.  In 
Greece  it  became  so  common  that  the  reigning  King  issued 
an  edict,  decreeing  the  death  of  all  young  virgins  who  should 
offer  such  an  insult  to  deity  as  to  lay  to  him  the  charge  of  be- 
getting their  children." 

"The  vestal  virgin  Rhea  Sylvin,  who  bore  Romulus  and 
Remus  to  the  god  Mars,  is  well  known.  It  is  a  curious  co- 


44  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

incidence  that  the  name  Rhea,  which  was  one  of  the  names 
of  the  Mother  of  all  the  gods,  is  applied  by  one  writer  to  the 
Virgin  Mary  who  likewise  became  the  'Mother  of  God'." 

The  Mongolian  conqueror,  Genghis  Khan,  and  his  two 
twin  brothers  were  said  to  be  the  result  of  an  occult  union  of 
the  earthly  mother  with  a  mysterious  intelligence. 

"His  mother  having  been  left  a  widow,  lived  a  retired 
life;  but  some  time  after  the  death  of  her  husband,  *  *  *  * 
she  was  suspected  to  be  pregnant.  The  deceased  husband's 
relations  forced  her  to  appear  before  the  chief  judge  of  the 
tribe,  for  this  crime.  She  boldly  defended  herself,  by  declaring 
that  no  man  had  known  her;  but  that  one  day,  lying  negligently 
on  her  bed,  a  light  appeared  in  her  room,  the  brightness  of 
which  blinded  her,  and  that  it  penetrated  three  times  into  her 
body,  and  that  if  she  brought  not  three  sons  into  the  world, 
she  would  submit  to  the  most  cruel  torments.  The  three  sons 
were  born,  and  the  princess  was  esteemed  a  saint.  The  Moguls 
believe  Genghis  Khan  to  be  the  product  of  this  miracle,  that 
God  might  punish  mankind  for  the  injustice  they  had  com- 
mitted." Anacalypsis  II.  353. 

Of  the  conqueror,  Tamerlane,  who  claimed  direct  descent 
from  Genghis  Khan  on  the  mother  side,  it  is  related  that  he 
was  the  result  of  a  connection  of  his  mother  with  the  God  of 
day. 

Dean  Milman  says,  in  his  History  of  Christianity  (Bible 
Myths,  p.  119.) 

"Fo-hi  of  China — according  to  tradition — was  born  of 
a  virgin,  and  the  first  Jesuit  missionaries  who  went  to  China 
were  appalled  at  finding,  in  the  mythology  of  that  country, 
a  counterpart  of  the  story  of  the  Virgin  of  Judea." 

But,  had  those  same  Jesuit  missionaries  apprehended 
the  idea  which  lies  back  of  both  stories — the  substantiality 
of  the  unseen  world  beyond  the  grave  and  the  possibility  of 
marital  relations  on  the  borderland  of  that  world  and  this, 
they  would  not  have  been  thus  "appalled."  Mother  of  Confu- 
cius, says  one  tradition,  when  walking  in  a  solitary  place, 
was  impregnated  by  the  vivifying  influence  of  the  heavens. 

The  Chinese  philosopher,  Lao-Tse,  born  604  B.  C.,  the 
founder  of  the  Religion  of  the  Supreme  Reason,  was  said  to 


Theodore  Schroeder  45 

have  been  born  of  a  virgin  of  a  black  complexion — a  forerunner 
this,  by  hundreds  of  years,  of  the  Black  Madonnas  in  the 
Italian  Churches. 

Do  those  black  Madonnas  typify,  mystically,  the  dark- 
ness of  the  unknown  world  beyond  the  grave  whence  the  Heaven- 
ly Spouse  emerges? 

The  Earls  of  Cleave  were  said  to  descend  from  a  union 
between  the  heiress  of  Cleave  and  a  being  from  the  upper  air, 
"who  came  to  Cleave  in  a  miraculous  ship,  drawn  by  a  swan, 
and  after  begetting  divers  children,  'went  away  at  Noon-day, 
in  the  sight  of  a  World  of  People,  in  his  Airy  Ship.'  ' 

The  famous  Robert  le  Diable,  according  to  one  tradition, 
was  the  child  of  an  incubus. 

The  enchanter  Merlin  "son  of  an  incubus  and  of  a  holy 
woman,  became  the  center  and  the  master  of  all  nature,"  says 
Peyrat  ******  (The  Magic  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Rydberg, 
204,)  the  number  of  those  adventurers  during  the  Middle  Ages 
who  asserted  themselves  or  others  to  be  the  bastards  of  devils 
and  human  beings.  But  if  they  had  led  a  blameless  life, 
evincing  a  firm  belief  in  the  dogmas  of  the  Church,  the  danger 
of  such  a  pedigree  was  not  greater  than  the  honor.  The  son  of  a 
fallen  angel  did  not  need  to  bend  his  head  before  a  man  of 
noble  birth. 

"But,"  it  will  be  objected,  "these  stories  are  myths  of  ancient, 
or  at  most,  mediaeval  times.  You  don't  find  virgin-born 
children  nowadays." 

Stay: 

In  the  establishment  of  Schweinfurth,  that  individual 
in  Rockford,  Illinois,  who  today  claims  to  be  the  Christ,  a 
woman  a  few  years  since  bore  a  child,  and  steadfastly  declared 
her  belief  that  it  was  immaculately  conceived.  Trial  it  is  said, 
before  a  jury  of  the  women  of  Schweinfurth's  establishment 
did  not  succeed  in  shaking  the  faith  of  these  women  in  the 
possibility  of  such  a  thing. 

In  the  Truthseeker  of  New  York  occurs  this  paragraph: 

"Mrs.  Helen  Fields,  of  Wichita,  Kansas,  has  given  birth 
to  a  child  whose  father  she  avers  is  the  Holy  Ghost." 

Moncure  D.  Conway,  in  his  Demonology  and    Devil-Lore, 
I.  231,  says: 


46  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

"When  in  Chicago  in  1875,  I  read  in  one  of  the  morning 
papers  a  very  particular  account  of  how  a  white  dove  flew 
into  the  chamber  window  of  a  young  unmarried  woman  in  a 
neighboring  village,  she  having  brought  forth  a  child,  and 
solemnly  declaring  that  she  had  never  lost  her  virginity." 

It  is,  of  course,  easy  to  dismiss  all  these  stories,  ancient, 
mediaeval  and  modern,  with  contempt,  as  so  many  falsehoods, 
or,  at  best,  self-delusions.  I  have  already  said  that,  despite 
the  immense  number  of  traditions  and  miraculous  births, 
I  doubt  if  such  ever  occur  upon  the  borderland  of  the  two  worlds, 
owing  to  certain  occult  principles  to  which  I  shall  briefly 
refer  further  on.  Nevertheless  this  mass  of  folklore  belief  is 
too  overwhelming  in  quantity  and  too  widely  diffused  to  be 
dismissed  lightly.  Back  of  it  all  there  must  be  some  objective 
realities  and  some  fire  for  all  this  smoke.  And  we  must  not 
forget  that  there  is  one  miraculous  birth  which  is  accepted 
throughout  Christendom — the  birth  of  Jesus  from  a  Divine 
Father  and  an  earthly  Virgin-Mother.  Nevertheless  by  the 
cultured  heathen  opponents  of  Justin,  the  story  of  the  divine 
paternity  of  Jesus  seems  to  have  been  regarded  with  a  scorn 
similar  to  that  with  which  we  regard  the  above  tales  today, 
and  that  Church  Father  showed  his  wisdom  when  he  placed 
heathen  and  Christian  stories  upon  the  same  logical  basis. 

Am  I  not  right  in  saying  that  to  impugn  the  possibility 
of  marital  relations  between  earthly  women  and  heavenly 
bridegrooms  is  to  strike  at  the  very  foundations  of  Christianity? 

In  folklore  customs  and  fairy  tales,  fantastic  though  these 
may  be,  we  find  numerous  indications  of  the  world-wide  belief  in 
bridegrooms  and  brides  from  the  unseen  world  of  spiritual 
beings,  or,  as  they  were  termed  in  the  middle  ages,  incubi  and  suc- 
cubae.  (Latin,  incubo,  "to  lie  upon;"  succubo,  "to  lie  under." 

We  may  set  out  with  that  description  among  the  islanders 
of  the  Antilles,  where  they  are  the  ghosts  of  the  dead,  vanishing 
when  clutched;  in  New  Zealand,  where  ancestral  deities  'form 
attachments  with  females,  and  pay  them  repeated  visits;' 
while  in  the  Samoan  Islands,  such  intercourse  of  mischievous 
inferior  gods  caused  'many  supernatural  conceptions;'  and  in 
Lapland,  where  details  of  this  last  extreme  class  have  also 


Theodore  Schroeder  47 

been  placed  on  record.  From  these  lower  grades  of  culture 
the  idea  may  be  followed  onward.  Formal  rites  are  specified 
in  the  Hindu  Tantra  which  enable  a  man  to  obtain  a  companion 
— nymph — by  worshiping  her  and  repeating  her  name  by  night 
in  a  cemetery.3 

Among  the  Metamba  negroes,  a  woman  is  bound  hand 
and  foot  by  the  priest,  who  flings  her  into  the  water  several 
times  over  with  the  intention  of  drowning  her  husband,  a  ghost, 
who  may  be  supposed  to  be  clinging  to  his  unfeeling  spouse. 
T.  F.  Thiselton  Dyers,  The  Ghost  World,  p.  182. 

In  China,  it  is  not  considered  respectable  for  widows 
to  re-marry,  for  the  express  reason  that  their  husbands  are 
expected  to  return  to  them  from  the  world  beyond  the  grave 
and  resume  marital  relations  with  them  upon  the  Borderland. 

In  the  case  of  widows  it  would  appear  to  be  but  a  resumption 
of  a  relation  previously  established  between  the  two  upon  earth. 
And  there  are  indications  that  the  same  stress  is  not  laid  upon 
passing  preliminary  ordeals  as  is  the  case  with  the  virgin, 
who  "has  never  known  man."  May  it  not  be  because  of  the 
virgin's  greater  ignorance,  physiologically  speaking,  so  that 
she  has  to  enter  upon  a  more  extended  course  of  training  than 
does  the  widow,  who  already  has  experience? 

The  myths  and  fairy  tales  which  speak  of  maidens  with 
mysterious  lovers  from  the  realm  of  the  unseen  are  certain  to 
contain,  so  far  as  I  have  observed,  reference  to  some  rule  or 
pledge  which  the  woman  must  strictly  observe.  If  she  fails 
to  do  this,  her  lover  vanishes,  and  she  can  find  him  again 
only  after  passing  long  and  toilsome  ordeals.  Such  was  the 
case  with  Psyche,  who  broke  the  command  of  her  heavenly 
lover,  Cupid,  not  to  look  upon  him  while  he  slept.  He  had 
come  to  her  night  after  night  in  the  darkness,  unseen,  as  is  the 
wont  with  so  many  of  these  heavenly  bridegrooms;  and  she  natural- 
ly desired  to  see  his  face.  But,  in  her  eagerness  to  know  him 
more  intimately,  she  let  fall  a  drop  of  hot  oil  from  the  lamp 
upon  him,  which  awoke  him,  and  he  vanished.  This  myth 
is  an  evident  euphemism  for  a  broken  law  of  marital  self-control. 
In  other  words,  she  wanted  to  enter  upon  the  second  step  in 
the  occult  training  which  she  was  receiving  from  her  husband, 


48  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

before  she  had  fully  mastered  the  first  step.  What  those 
steps  were — first,  second  and  third — (for  there  is  a  third) 
through  which  the  earthly  wife  of  a  heavenly  bridegroom  must 
pass,  will  appear  further  on  in  this  book. 

To  BE  CONTINUED. 


1.  His  mother  Danae  was  said  to  have  been  imprisoned,  while   yet   a    virgin,   in   a 
high  tower,  that  she  might  have  no  children.     Jupiter,   however,  visited  her   manifestly 
as  a  shower  of  gold,  and  Perseus  was  the  result  of  the  union. 

2.  Ten  lunar  months,  28  days  presumably,  meant  here. 

3.  Tylor,  "Prim.     Culture,"  3rd  Ed.  1891,  II,  189,  190.     (Ward,    "Hindoos,"   Vol. 
II,  p.  151.     See  also  Borri,  "Cochin  China"  in  Pinkerton,  Vol.  IX,  p.  823.) 


HEAVENLY  BRIDEGROOMS* 

BY  THEODORE  SCHROEDER 

AND  IDA  C. 

"The   Sons   of  God  saw  the  daughters  of  men  that  they 

were  fair;  and  they  took  them  wives  of  all  that 

they  chose.' 

Genesis  6:2. 

IN  one  of  the  oldest  of  the    Vedas — those    books    which 
contain    the    legends    of   the  Aryans  before  they  split 
up   into  fragmentary  races — we  find   a  similar  story  about 
Urvasi  and  Pururavas. 

These  two  stories  are  usually  explained  as  myths  which 
show  how  the  dawn  vanishes  as  soon  as  it  looks  upon  the  sun. 
In  solar  myths,  the  dawn  is  often  typified  as  a  maiden,  the 
sun-god  being  her  lover  who  pursues  her  vanishing  form 
through  the  heavens — an  idea  picturesquely  brought  out  in 
the  myth  of  Cinderella.  If  these  two  stories  really  are  a 
bit  of  sun  and  dawn  folklore  then,  Urvasi  and  Psyche 
must  each  be  the  dawn-maiden,  and  Pururavas  and  Cupid 
must  be  the  sun-god  on  whose  glorious  form,  unveiled  by 
any  clouds,  the  dawn-maiden  dare  not  look,  for,  as  she  looks, 
the  two  lovers  become  separated — i.  e.,  the  dawn  vanishes 
before  the  rising  sun.  But  it  is  a  little  curious  that  in  one 
story,  the  maiden  disappears,  while  in  the  other  it  is  the 
lover  himself  who  flees.  Obviously  there  is  some  other  myth 
than  a  purely  solar  one  involved  in  these  two  stories, — 
stories  so  strikingly  similar  and  yet  so  strikingly  at  variance 
in  the  one  feature  in  which  they  should  agree,  if  true  sun 
and  dawn  myths. 


*Continued  from  May,  1916. 


(49) 


50  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

May  not  their  likeness  be  due  to  their  being  memorials 
of  the  belief  in  Borderland  marriages  and  in  the  self-control 
which  is  obligatory  upon  the  earthly  partner  in  such  mar- 
riages? May  not  their  unlikeness  as  to  the  sex  of  the  partner 
who  disappears  when  that  self-control  is  violated,  be  due 
to  there  being  heavenly  brides,  as  well  as  heavenly  bride- 
grooms? 

To  these  same  myths,  I  take  it,  belong  all  those  fairy 
stories  of  which  Beauty  and  the  Beast  is  the  type.  Here,  a 
maiden  noted  as  a  rule,  for  her  amiability  and  gentleness, 
is  served  each  day  by  invisible  hands,  and  at  night  receives 
her  lover,  in  the  form  of  a  handsome  prince.  By  the  ordinary 
light  of  day,  he  is  a  monster,  appalling  to  behold,  or,  in 
some  of  the  stories,  he  is  invisible;  but  night  and  the  mar- 
riage couch  cause  him  to  materialize  in  his  true  shape.  Fi- 
nally, her  family  and  friends — themselves  quite  outsiders 
as  to  these  experiences — work  upon  her  feelings  and  make  her 
believe  that  this  union  is  evil  (in  occult  parlance,  it  would  be 
termed  diabolical)  and  she  breaks  off  her  connection  with 
him.  In  the  end,  true  love  triumphs,  and  the  lovers  are 
reunited — under  happier  auspices,  that  is,  in  the  fairy  story; 
in  actual  life,  it  too  often  happens  that  Beauty  and  the 
Beast  are  permanently  separated  by  meddling  outsiders 
who  ignorantly  assume  that  everything  which  they  cannot 
understand  comes  from  the  Devil.  The  poor  earthly  psychic 
has  so  constantly  dinned  into  her  ears  the  fact  that  her 
mediumship  has  revealed  glimpses  of  monstrosities  and 
deceptions,  that  she  comes  at  last  to  fear  lest  her  invisible 
visitor  be  in  truth  the  evil  demon  which  at  times,  by  the 
sober  light  of  day,  he  seems  to  be.  All  unaware  of  the  law 
by  which  her  own  failures  and  peccadilloes  bring  about 
subjective  hallucinations  which  mislead,  she  ascribes  to  her 
angelic  briedgroom  a  tendency  to  evil  which  he  does  not 
possess,  and  finally  comes  to  shrink  from  him  as  demoniacal. 
And  the  laws  of  Borderland  forbid  his  undeceiving  her  so 
long  as  she  hold  fast  to  her  prejudice  as  if  it  were  gospel 
truth.  Thus  Beauty  too  often  turns  away  from  her  princely 
lover  forever,  so  far  as  this  earth-life  is  concerned,  as  Beauty 


Theodore  Schroeder  51 

in  the  fairy  story  did  from  the  husband  whom  ignorant 
outsiders  had  led  her  to  look  upon  as  Beast. 

Pyramus  and  Thisbe,  the  lovers  who,  separated  by  a 
huge  wall,  were  fain  to  satisfy  themselves  with  kisses  ex- 
changed through  a  hole  therein,  are  a  euphemistic  expression 
for  those  marital  unions  one  of  the  parties  to  which  is  in- 
visible and  his  earthly  love  impalpable  to  the  physical 
senses.  In  this  story  a  bloodthirsty  lion  puts  an  end  to 
the  lovemaking.  This  is  probably  the  solar  lion,  the  meaning 
being  that  the  ancient  faith  is  superseded  by  the  later 
and  (in  some  respects)  purer  Sun  Worship  which  seems  to 
have  been  a  reform  movement  of  the  science  and  materialism 
of  the  time  against  the  Borderland  sensuality  which  obtained 
in  the  declining  age  of  Sex  Worship. 

Isis  and  Osiris  are  also  types  of  the  husband  and  wife 
who  unite  upon  the  Borderland.  Egyptian  sacred  tradi- 
tions were  wont  to  relate  that  Osiris  was  killed  by  the 
Typhon,  who  then  cut  up  his  victim's  body  into  fourteen 
pieces,  enclosed  it  in  an  ark,  and  set  adrift  upon  the  River 
Nile.  Isis,  the  Virgin-Mother,  sought  far  and  wide  for  these 
remnants  of  her  husband's  body.  One  legend  states  that 
she  found  all,  except  the  phallus;  another,  that  she  found 
nothing  except  the  phallus,  and  from  that  solitary  fragment, 
she  reconstructed  her  husband,  entire.  Here  we  evidently 
have  two  sides  of  the  same  esoteric  idea — that  the  loss  of 
sex  power  constitutes  the  true  death  of  the  soul  (not,  of 
course,  the  spirit)  and  that  in  the  finding  of  one's  marital 
partner  on  the  Borderland  the  ghost  may  be  gradually 
materialized  into  substantiality  by  beginning  at  the  same 
starting-point  as  did  Isis. 

Heavenly  bridegrooms  it  will  be  noticed,  predominate 
over  heavenly  brides  in  Borderland  traditions.  The  reason, 
I  take  it,  is  that  women,  because  of  their  social  environment, 
usually  lead  a  more  self-controlled  and  temperate  life  than 
men  do,  and  thus  are  in  most  (though  not  all)  respects 
more  worthy  of  marital  union  with  an  angel.  Custom  allows 
men  more  freedom — a  privilege  which  the  masculine  sex  is 
not  slow  to  avail  itself  of,  especially  in  the  direction  of 
wine,  women  and  tobacco.  These  three  dissipations  not  only 


52  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

exhaust  the  nerve  force  of  men,  but  blunt  both  their  physi- 
cal and  their  moral  sensibilities;  so  that  the  man  for  whom, 
in  all  possibility,  his  angel  mate  may  be  waiting  upon  the 
Borderland,  may  find  himself  handicapped  at  the  outset, 
should  he  ever  essay  an  adventure  into  Borderland  romance 
while  still  on  the  earth.  In  this  connection,  we  may  re- 
mark that  in  India,  where  the  attempt  to  obtain  a  spirit 
wife  is  said  to  be  of  common  occurrence  (and  it  would  ap- 
pear often  rewarded  with  success)  we  find  a  nation  singularly 
gentle  and  peaceable  in  disposition,  unaccustomed  to  drunk- 
enness until  taught  it  by  outside  peoples  (there  is  a  pro- 
verbial saying  among  the  Hindus  "as  drunk  as  a  Christian") 
and  endowed  by  nature  with  a  tendency  to  aspire  to  union 
with  God.  Last,  but  not  least,  it  is  a  nation  whose  religions, 
for  the  most  part,  recognize  the  truth  that  sex  is  holy; 
and  in  this  it  is  in  strong  contrast  with  our  Western  "civil- 
ization0 where  the  most  sacred  function  of  humanity  is 
looked  upon  as  vile.  We  occidentals  have  a  whole  life's 
teaching  to  unlearn,  before  we  can  approach  the  subject 
of  marital  relations  on  the  Borderland  from  a  natural 
and  pure-minded  standpoint. 

The  chief  tradition  regarding  spirit  brides  relates  to 
Lilith  or  Lilis  or  Lilot  and  is  mostly  Rabbinical.  As  in  the 
case  of  the  angelic  bridegrooms,  she  is  supposed  to  be 
demoniacal.  Lilith  is  said  to  have  been  Adam's  first  wife, 
one  tradition  says  that  and  by  her  he  begat  only  demons, 
another  says  that  she  rebelled  when  Adam  assumed  authority 
over  her  and  fled  from  him  to  the  evil  angel  Samall;  to  whom 
she  bore  a  demon  progeny.  Another  legend  has  it  that  being 
jealous  of  Eve  she  slipped  back  into  Eden  behind  the 
particeps  criminis  in  the  temptation. 

Another  says  that  Adam  kept  himself  apart  from  Eve 
for  a  hundred  years  in  order  not  to  fill  hell  with  their 
offspring;  but  that  in  a  weak  moment  a  female  devil, 
called  Lilith,  seduced  him  and  became  his  wife,  and  from 
their  union  arose  devils,  ghosts  and  evil  night  dreams; 
and  Eve  in  like  manner  became  the  wife  of  a  demon.  [The 
Serpent  in  Paradise.  London.]  Of  a  similar  tenor  is  the 
tradition  about  the  Zoroastrian  Yeina,  who  fell  from  a 


Theodore  Schroeder  53 

state  of  innocence  by  means  of  a  great  serpent,  the    Azis- 
Dahaka. 

"For  a  long  period  Yiena  and  his  subjects  were  in  the 
power  of  this  evil  serpent,  Azis — Dahaka,  the  demons  *  *  *  * 
Yiena  himself  in  order  to  oblige  his  masters,  had  to  abandon 
his  own  wife,  who  was  also  his  sister,  and  to  take  a  female 
devil  for  his  wife,  and  to  consent  to  the  union  of  his  former 
wife  with  a  demon.  From  these  unions  were  produced 
apes,  bears,  and  black  men.  During  this  evil  period  women 
much  preferred  young  devils  to  young  men  for  husbands, 
and  men  married  young  seductive  "Paris,"  or  "female  devils." 

[The  Serpent  in   Paradise:   The  Serpent  in  Mythology.] 

The  psychic  who  can  sustain  marital  relation  on  the 
Borderland  must  above  all  be  sensitive  at  the  extremities 
of  the  nerves  of  touch.  Neither  blind  people  nor  deaf 
people  are  hindered  by  their  respective  infirmities  from 
marrying  in  this  earth-life  and  on  the  Borderland  a  psychic 
may  be  clairvoyant  and  clairaudient  to  only  a  limited  ex- 
tent, and  yet  be  a  partaker  in  connubial  joys.  For  the 
Borderland  husband  must  materialize  more  or  less  fully 
to  enable  her  to  understand  the  relation  clearly  upon  the 
physical  side:  Whereas  for  most  men  this  is  unnecessary, 
and  the  spirit  bride  may  remain  in  all  save  a  few  essentials, 
invisible,  inaudible,  intangible — a  veritable  "woman  of  air." 
Hence  her  ghostliness  and  her  philological  connection  with 
the  idea  of  pale  blue  or  pale  purple — the  color  of  air  and 
the  mist. 

Lilith  is  said  to  come  to  young  men's  bedsides  at  night 
to  seduce  them,  under  the  aspect  of  a  beautiful  and  finely 
dressed  woman  with  golden  hair.  And,  afterwards  she 
strangled  them,  and  they  are  known  to  be  Lilith's  victims 
because  one  of  her  golden  hairs  is  found  tightly  wound  around 
the  victim's  heart.  In  the  Zoroastrian  legends,  she  is  much 
connected  with  night  and  night-dreams;  and  men  are  cau- 
tioned not  to  sleep  alone  for  fear  of  the  evils  of  Lilith. 
She  also  lies  in  wait  for  children  to  kill  them  if  they  are 
not  protected  by  "Amulets." 

"Herodotus  says  that  the  Arabians  called  the  moon 
'Alilat  the  Assyrian  word  for  night  is  Lilat,'  and  Talbot 


54  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

supposes  that  the  Arabians  really  called  the  moon  'Sarrat 
ha  Lilat,'  the  queen  of  night.  ****** 

"Mr.  Talbot  also  says  'Alilat'  may  also  mean  the  star 
Venus. 

"The  Greeks  considered  Lilith  evidently  to  be  the  moon, 
as  with  them  she  is  Ilithyia,  the  sister  of  Apollo,  one  of 
the  birth  goddesses.  Night  in  Helrewis  layelah. 

"That  the  moon  should  be  selected  to  represent  the 
feminine  principle  is  readily  accounted  for  by  her  waxing 
and  waning  propensities,  to  say  nothing  of  her  controlling 
or  coinciding  with  the  feminine  periods." 

[The   Serpent   in   Paradise,   etc.] 

Summing  up  these  varying  traditions  we  find  the 
following  incidents  prominent: 

1.  A   woman  who   is  not   of  the   earth   but   evidently 
from  an  unknown  world  enters  upon  relations  with  Adam 
or  with  the  men  of  later  generations. 

2.  The  relation  is  in  most  cases  that  of  husband  and 
wife  and  not  a  mere  liaison. 

3.  [In  those  cases  where  the  relation  is  illicit,  the  earth- 
ly partner  comes  to  an  unfortunate  end.] 

4.  This  woman  from  the  unseen  world  is  credited  with 
being  a  seducer  and  a  devil. 

5.  She  bears  no  children  save  demons  and  is  reputed 
to  destroy  children. 

6.  She    causes   men    to    dream    evil    dreams    at   night. 
Lilith    is    evidently    the    complement    of    the    tradition 

about  angelic  bridegrooms.  That  the  typical  spirit  bride 
should  have  so  much  more  unsavory  a  reputation  than  has 
the  typical  spirit  bridegroom  of  nowaday.  The  masculine 
nature  is  proverbial  for  its  lack  of  self-control  where  women 
are  concerned :  and  in  this  it  has  usually  contrasted  unfavorably 
with  the  self-control  of  women  in  similar  cases.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  men  of  our  Western  civilization  are  mostly  superior 
to  our  women  (of  the  virtuous  classes)  in  the  ardent,  dramatic 
and  artistic  expression  of  love  for  the  opposite  sex — a  desirable 
qualification  in  the  romance  and  uncertainties  and  trying 
ordeals  of  Borderland  wedlock. 


Theodore  Schroeder  55 

If,  therefore,  the  propositions  which  I  have  laid  down 
as  to  the  necessity  for  self-control  in  occult  investigations 
be  correct  we  need  not  be  surprised  that  the  spirit  bride 
is  ere  long  denounced  as  demoniacal  and  seducing.  But  it 
is  to  the  ignorance  or  the  wilful  wrong-doing  of  her  earthly 
lover  that  is  to  blame,  and  not  the  spirit-bride — unless  in 
some  rare  instance,  where  the  celestial  visitor  is  exceptionally 
careless.  In  that  case,  her  superiors  in  the  invisible  world 
interfere  and  remove  her.  The  connection  with  her  earthly 
partner  is  snapped  never  to  be  resumed  until  he  passes 
over  to  her  world  at  death.  But  such  failures  on  the  part 
of  the  heavenly  visitor  are  rare ;  and  if  the  resulting  phenom- 
ena are  diabolical,  it  is  the  earthly  medium's  own  fault. 

That  she  should  bear  no  children  except  demons 
points  to  the  proposition  which  I  have  already  advanced 
that  children  cannot  be  begotten  from  Borderland  marriage 
unions.  If  the  earthly  husband  still  insists  on  doing  all 
he  can  to  beget  such  children  he  breaks  the  law  of  Borderland, 
and  will  be  led  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  mire  of  sensuality, 
and  at  last,  perhaps  be  deceived  by  a  subjective  hallucination 
of  devils  whom  he  will  be  told  are  his  children.  If  he  presses 
for  information,  he  will  probably  receive  a  more  explicit 
truthful  statement;  i.  e.,  that  his  spirit  bride  is  unable  to 
bear  children  on  the  Borderland  of  two  worlds.  But  should 
he  fail  about  this  time  in  some  detail  of  moral  duty,  or 
clear-headedness,  and  especially  should  he  insist  in  sowing  seed 
where  no  harvest  can  be  reaped,  he  will  most  certainly  be  misled 
by  all  sorts  of  fantastic  excuses.  For  such  is  the  occult 
law.  The  psychic  who,  whether  ignorantly  or  wilfully,  is 
unworthy,  loses  his  grip  on  the  lines  of  communication,  and 
his  own  ill-regulated  sub-liminal  consciousness  then  steps 
in  with  its  ingenious  excuses — such  as,  perhaps,  that  his 
celestial  partner  is  abnormally  constituted  as  a  woman,  or 
that  she  kills  their  children  as  fast  as  they  are  begotten, 
etc,  etc.  And  thus,  through  the  failure  of  the  earthly  husband 
to  observe  the  laws  of  marital  self-control  on  the  Borderland, 
one  more  tradition  is  launched  upon  the  world  about  the 
devil-bride  who  seduces  men  and  begets  demons  and  kills 
children. 


56  Heavenly  Bridegrooms 

That  she  should  be  credited  with  being  the  author  01 
"Evil  night-dreams"  shows  how  prone  the  partners  of  spirit 
brides  have  been  to  subjective  hallucinations.  We  do  not 
find  any  such  wholsesale  charge  brought  against  spirit 
husbands  of  portraying  evil  dreams  as  is  brought  against 
Lilith.  The  imaginations  of  men's  hearts  must  indeed  have 
been  evil  in  those  days  and  their  brains  beclouded  or  the 
difference  between  a  materialized  spirit  bride  and  the  sub- 
jective phantasm  of  an  amorous  dream  would  have  been 
more  sharply  defined.  The  psychic  who  conforms  two  sep- 
arate planes  of  existence  has  forsaken  the  path  of  self- 
control  and  clear-headedness,  and  has  entered  upon  the 
path  whose  end  is  insane  delusion. 

In  the  supplement  of  Littre's  Dictionary,  (French),  1877, 
occurs  a  suggestive  etymology  of  the  word  lilac  (or  as  it 
is  in  French,  lilas.)  The  writer  connects  the  root  of  this 
word  with  the  Persian  nil,  indigo,  and  calls  attention  to 
the  various  Persian  words,  nilah,  niladj,  liladj,  lilandj,  lilang, 
all  relating  to  indigo.  He  connects  the  word  lilas  (French 
for  lilac)  with  these  words  and  also  with  the  diminutive 
lilak  (bluish,  as  fingers  blued  by  the  cold) — a  tint  which 
perfectly  characterizes  the  flowers  of  the  lilac  of  Persia 
which  are  of  a  pale  purple.  May  there  be  some  philo- 
sophical connection  between  this  palely  purple  flower  "lilas" 
and  the  ghostly  "Lilis"  or  "Lilat"  or  "Lilith?" 

Lilith  figures  in  a  text  of  Isaiah:  but  we  have  to  go 
both  to  Mohammedan  and  to  Ancient  Greek  folklore  to 
find  the  connecting  link  between  this  text  and  the  Lilith 
of  Rabbinical  traditions.  The  text  refers  to  the  destruction 
which  the  Lord  threatens  will  befall  Eden,  and  reads: 

"And  thorns  shall  come  up  in  her  palaces,  nettles  and 
thistles  in  the  fortresses  thereof;  and  it  shall  be  an  habitation 
of  jackals,  a  court  for  ostriches  and  the  wild  beasts  of  the 
desert  shall  meet  with  the  wolves  [or  howling  creatures]: 
and  the  saytr  [or  he-goat J  shall  cry  to  his  fellow:  yea, 
the  night-monster  shall  settle  there,  and  shall  find  her  a  place 
of  rest."  Isaiah  XXXIV.  13,  14,  Revised  Version. 

The  word  "night-monster"  is  in  Hebrew,  "Lilith," 
The  King  James  version  translates  this  word  "screech-owl;" 


Theodore  Schroeder  57 

the  Vulgate,  "Lamia;*'  in  Luther's  Bible,  "Kobold."  Lamia 
or  Lamya  is  found  in  the  Great  Bible,  and  in  Coverdale's, 
Matthew's,  Beck's  and  the  Bishop's  Bible. 

Now  a  lamia  is  a  mythical  serpent-woman  of  a  de- 
moniacal character.  P^ilostratus,  in  his  Life  of  Apollonius 
of  Tyana,  gives  a  memorable  instance.  A  young  man  on 
the  road  near  Corinth  met  a  charming  woman  who  invited 
him  to  her  house  in  the  suburbs  of  the  city,  and  said  that 
if  he  would  remain  with  her,  "he  should  hear  her  sing 
and  play,  and  drink  such  wine  as  never  any  drank,  and  no 
man  should  molest  him;  and  she  being  fair  and  lovely  would 
live  and  die  with  him."  The  young  man  was,  as  Burton  in 
his  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  puts  it  in  giving  the  account, 
"a  philosopher,  otherwise  staid  and  discreet,  able  to  moderate 
his  passions,  though  not  this  of  love,"  and  he  "tarried  with 
her  awhile  to  his  great  content."  At  last  he  married  her. 
To  the  wedding  came  Apollonius,  and  he  at  once  recognized 
her  as  a  lamia,  and  declared  that  all  her  furniture  was  but 
illusion.  She  wept  and  begged  Apollonius  to  be  silent, 
but  he  persisted  in  exposing  her,  whereupon  she,  her  house 
and  its  content  vanished. 

This  is  probably  a  Beauty  and  the  Beast  myth  on  the 
masculine  side,  Apollonius  playing  the  part  of  the  outsider 
who  separates  the  lovers  by  harping  on  the  things  which  are 
illusory  and  monstrous  in  the  young  man's  psychic  mani- 
festations. It  is  worth  noticing  in  this  connection,  that  the 
young  man  had  been  living  a  temperate  and  self-controlled 
life  when  he  was  first  approached  by  this  Lamia  or  Lilith, 
so  that  he  was  evidently  found  worthy  to  taste  the  joys  of 
affectionate  connubial  intercourse  with  his  mysterious  bride. 
Here  evidently,  the  young  man  is  not  strong  enough  to 
endure  the  training  required  to  consummate  Borderland 
wedlock.  He  also,  evidently,  does  not  have  his  sub-con- 
sciousness well  under  control,  but  allows  it  to  run  away  with 
him.  Mastery  of  self  in  every  possible  aspect,  physically, 
intellectually,  morally,  affectionally  is  one  of  two  requisites 
for  sustained  marital  relations  on  the  Borderland;  the  other 
requisite  being  steadfast  aspiration  to  personal  communion  with 
the  Divine. 


HEAVENLY  BRIDEGROOMS* 

BY    THEODORE    SCHROEDER 
AND   IDA   C. 

"The   Sons   of   God   saw   the   daughters  of  men   that   they 

were  fair;   and  they  took  them  wives  of  all  that 

they  chose." 

Genesis  6:2. 

THE   MOHAMMEDAN   IDEA   OP  THE  EVIL  CHURCH  YARD 
LILITH    CROPS    UP    IN    IRELAND 

THE  ancient  Churchyard  of  Truagh,  county  Monaghan, 
is  said  to  be  haunted  by  an  evil  spirit,  whose  appear- 
ance generally  forebodes  death.  The  legend  runs,  writes 
Lady  Wilde  (Ancient  Cures,  Charms  and  Usages  of  Ireland, 
p.  84),  "that  at  funerals  the  spirit  watches  for  the  person 
who  remains  last  in  the  graveyard.  If  it  be  a  young  man 
who  is  there  alone,  the  spirit  takes  the  form  of  a  beautiful 
young  girl,  inspires  him  with  ardent  passion,  and  exacts 
from  him  a  promise  that  he  will  meet  her  that  day  month 
in  the  churchyard.  The  promise  is  then  sealed  by  a  kiss, 
which  sends  a  fatal  fire  through  his  veins,  so  that  he  is 
unable  to  resist  her  caresses,  and  makes  the  promise  re- 
quired. Then  she  disappears,  and  the  young  man  proceeds 
homewards;  but  no  sooner  has  he  passed  the  boundary  wall 
of  the  churchyard  than  the  whole  story  of  the  evil  rushes 
on  his  mind,  and  he  knows  that  he  has  sold  himself,  soul 
and  body,  for  a  demon's  kiss.  Then  terror  and  dismay 
take  hold  of  him,  till  despair  becomes  insanity,  and  on  the 
very  day  month  fixed  for  the  meeting  with  the  demon  bride, 
the  victim  dies  the  death  of  a  raving  lunatic,  and  is  laid 
in  the  fatal  graveyard  of  Truagh."  (T.  F.  Thiselton  Dyer's 
"The  Ghost  World,"  344-345.) 

from  November,  1916. 

(58) 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  59 

In  Capt.  Richard  F.  Burton's  translation  of  the  Arabian 
Nights  occurs  a  story  of  a  female  desert-monster,  called 
Ghulah,  who  devours  human  flesh.  Captain  Burton,  in  a 
footnote,  remarks: 

"The  Ghulah  (fern,  of  Ghul)  is  the  Hebrew  Lilith  or 
Lilis;  the  classical  Lamia;  the  Hindu  Yogini  and  Dakini; 
the  Chaldean  Utug  and  Gigim  (desert-demons)  as  opposed 
to  the  Mas  (hill-demon)  and  Telal  (who  steal  into  towns); 
the  Ogress  of  our  tales  and  the  Bala  yaga  (Granny-witch) 
of  Russian  folklore.  Etymologically  'Ghul'  is  a  calamity, 
a  panic  fear;  and  the  monster  is  evidently  the  embodied 
horror  of  the  grave  and  the  graveyard." 

In  its  more  usual  spelling  of  "Ghoul,"  this  graveyard 
monster  will  probably  be  familiar  to  most  readers. 

"The  female  Ghul  *  *  *  *  appears  to  men  in  the 
deserts,  in  various  forms,  converses  with  them,  and  some- 
times prostitutes  herself  to  them  *  *  *  * 

Here  we  see  the  (l)  spirit  bride,  degraded  to  the  level  of  a 
harlot,  (2)  vague  and  unreasoning  terror,  (3)  loathing  and  horror 
of  the  spirits  of  the  deceased  all  meeting  under  one  name. 
So  far  has  Lilith,  the  Borderland  bride,  fallen  from  her  right- 
ful estate  by  reason  of  the  befogged  imaginations  of  mankind. 

"The  Shiqq  is  another  demoniacal  creature,  having  the 
form  of  a  half  human  being  (like  a  man  divided  longitudinally) 
and  it  is  believed  that  the  Nasnas  is  the  offspring  of  a 
Shiqq  and  a  human  being  *  *  *  *  The  Nasnas  is  described 
as  having  half  a  head,  half  a  body,  one  arm,  and  one  leg, 
with  which  it  hops  with  much  agility."  (A  Dictionary  of 
Islam  [article  Genii]  by  Thos.  Patrick  Hughes.) 

This  is  another  form  of  the  giant  progeny  of  Borderland 
unions — a  form  so  fantastic  as  to  show  that  its  origin  is  a 
subjective  hallucination,  and  not  an  objective  reality.  In 
other  words,  the  Mohammedan,  Shiqq  and  Nasnas  are 
both  of  them  probably  the  subliminal  invention  of  some 
imperfect  earthly  psychic  in  the  centuries  agone,  who  broke 
the  Borderland  law  in  his  or  her  relations  with  a  spirit 
bride,  or  a  spirit  husband  and  who  was  grossly  misled,  in 
consequence,  by  his  or  her  own  subliminal  self.  That  others 
since  then  claim  from  time  to  time  to  see  these  fantastic 


60  Theodore  Schroeder 

creatures  does  not  prove  that  they  exist  In  psychical 
matters  nothing  is  more  common  than  for  people  to  see 
ghosts  at  a  given  time  and  place  when  their  imaginations 
have  been  worked  up  to  the  expectation  of  seeing  one  then 
and  there,  of  a  certain  predetermined  type. 

The  Mohammedan  Paradise  as  well  as  its  Borderland 
recognizes  love  between  the  sexes.  And  in  this  it  differs 
from  the  Christian  Paradise  as  popularly  conceived — although 
as  I  have  elsewhere  shown,  the  statement  by  Jesus  that  we 
shall  be  after  death,  as  regards  marrying,  like  "the  angels 
in  heaven,"  when  taken  in  connection  with  the  next  in 
Genesis  about  the  sons  of  God  who  wedded  earthly  women, 
shows  pretty  conclusively  that  the  Christian  Scriptures  ad- 
mit the  existence  of  sex  and  marriage  in  the  world  beyond 
the  grave.  Nevertheless,  the  Church  has  chosen  to  flatly 
contradict  the  teaching  of  both  the  Old  and  the  New  Testa- 
ment in  this,  with  the  result  of  blinding  Christians  utterly 
to  these  potent  Scriptural  truths.  Mohammed,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  sufficient  of  a  seer  to  venture  on  restoring 
the  ancient  doctrine. 

Heaven,  as  is  well  known,  abounds  in  love-making, 
beautiful  women  called  Houris  attending  upon  the  risen 
soul  of  the  male  Mohammedan  as  he  reclines  at  feast.  It 
is  true  that  apologists  have  suggested  a  figurative  sense  in 
which  the  accounts  of  Mohammed's  Paradise  are  to  be  taken. 

On  the  contrary,  it  is  not  at  all  remarkable.  It  was 
precisely  because  Mohammed  was  at  that  time  living  a 
fairly  well  ordered  and  self-controlled  life,  that  he  was 
enabled  to  learn  sufficient  of  the  world  beyond  the  grave 
to  assert  that  love  between  the  sexes  survives  death  and  is 
one  of  the  potent  factors  in  social  life  there,  as  here.  It 
is  true  that,  being  an  Oriental,  his  "revelations' '  would 
inevitably  conform  to  his  cast  of  mind,  so  that  the  glitter 
and  luxurious  abandon  of  a  feast  presided  over  by  Houris 
might  seem  to  him  the  acme  of  ideal  bliss.  But  beneath 
and  permeating  all  this  voluptuous  imagining  breathes  the 
mighty  truth  of  sex-love  in  Paradise. 

That  love  which  mutually  strengthens  and  mutually 
uplifts  as  no  other  love  in  all  the  world  can  strengthen  and 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  61 

uplift.  I  take  it  is  the  chief  reason  for  its  existence — the 
propagation  of  the  species  being  of  necessity  incidental, 
therefore,  secondary.  But  there  is,  also,  a  third  reason 
which,  unfortunately,  is  known  to  but  few.  Nor  is  it 
likely  to  be  understood  as  it  should  be.  The  third  reason 
for  the  marital  union  is  that  for  those  who  are  worthy, 
it  is  whether  on  the  Borderland  or  the  earthly  plane,  the 
surest  and  safest  method  of  seeking  union  with  the  Divine 
Heart  of  the  Universe  and  becoming  one  with  all  God's 
world.  Only  in  giving  joyful  thanks  to  God,  indeed,  should 
that  relation  ever  be  entered  upon.  This,  not  only  because 
it  is  fitting  to  give  thanks  to  God,  but  because  it  is  beautiful 
at  that  time,  and  because  only  those  who  have  experienced 
the  bliss  of  taking  God  into  the  marital  partnership  in  its 
most  intimate  relation  can  be  said  either  to  be  truly  wedded 
or  to  truly  realize  what  it  is  to  love  God  and  be  in  return 
beloved  by  Him.  This  applies  in  earthly  as  well  as  Border- 
land wedlock. 

Trite  and  commonplace  as  may  seem  this  suggestion 
to  give  thanks  to  God  in  this  relation  and  share  one's  joy 
with  Him,  it  nevertheless  appears  to  be  the  inner,  sacred 
truth  of  all  religions  on  their  esoteric  side,  and  of  all  mysti- 
cisms and  forms  of  occult  teaching,  the  world  over — a  truth 
which  has  been  jealously  hidden  away  from  the  masses. 
It  has  been  concealed  for  several  reasons,  probably. 

First,  it  is  not  a  matter  to  be  attained  at  once,  but 
requires  systematic  and  careful  training  in  self-control. 
And  some  degree  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  insight  is 
necessary  to  rate  this  training  at  its  just  value,  as  well 
as  to  respect  the  sacredness  of  the  idea  which  underlies 
it.  There  are  three  degrees  to  be  passed  in  this  training,  of 
which  I  will  speak  later  on. 

Second,  inasmuch  as  it  enhances,  instead  of  extinguish- 
ing, connubial  pleasure,  while  at  the  same  time  it  puts  the 
begetting  of  children  absolutely  under  the  control  of  parents, 
and  this,  without  violation  of  either  civil  or  natural  laws, 
its  initiates  evidently  feared  lest  it  be  turned  to  base  uses 
by  the  unscrupulous  and  licentious.  A  needless  fear,  this, 
however;  as  to  the  libertine,  the  game  will  never  seem  worth 


62  Theodore  Schroeder 

the  candle;  while,  should  he  persevere  in  the  training  so 
as  to  become  an  adept  in  the  third  and  last  degree,  he  will 
he  no  longer  a  libertine. 

Third.  There  is  a  belief  among  some  occultists  that 
an  earnest  wish  breathed  at  that  time,  when  husband  and 
wife  are  one,  it  will  not  fail  to  be  granted.  This  opens, 
it  is  said,  the  door  to  those  who  practice  what  is  called 
%lack  magic,"  and  enables  them  to  work  harm  upon 
other  human  beings.  What  foundation  there  is  for  this 
belief  as  applied  to  the  magicians  I  do  not  see.  If  it  really 
be  that  a  wish  is  granted  then  more  readily  than  when  the 
seeker  is  in  any  other  mood,  it  is  probably  because  the 
occultist  who  attains  the  second  degree  has  to  exercise 
such  supreme  self-control  at  that  moment  that  he  is  complete 
master  of  his  sub-consciousness,  and  if  he  has  attained  the 
third  degree  he  is  in  rapport  with  Spirit  throughout  the 
universe,  so  that  his  desire  is  granted  because  he  desires 
only  what  is  in  harmony  with  Good  and  Right.  That  a 
black  magician  should  be  able  at  such  a  moment  to  enter 
upon  harmonious  relations  with  the  universe  by  breathing 
a  curse,  seems  to  me  very  unlikely.  I  am  of  the  opinion  that 
this  belief  is  due  to  the  mistaken  idea  that  correct  living  and 
clear  thinking  are  unnecessary  to  establish  lines  of  accurate 
communication  with  the  unseen  world.  And,  because 
occultists  have  usually  assumed  the  nearness  of  a  world  of 
devils,  rather  than  of  a  world  of  angels,  and  because  they 
have  assumed  that  depravity  and  prejudice  offer  no  bar  to 
communication  with  the  unseen,  whether  good  or  evil,  it 
was  a  most  natural  conclusion  that  it  would  be  dangerous 
to  entrust  the  secret  of  the  third  degree  to  a  "black  magi- 
cian." But,  so  long  as  a  man  is  a  black  magician,  he  will 
fail  to  enter  upon  the  third  degree.  This  last  degree  is,  I  am 
firmly  convinced,  impossible,  whether  in  earthly  or  Borderland 
wedlock,  for  either  man  or  woman  who  does  not  live  a  pure 
life  in  self-control  and  aspiration  to  the  Divine.  And  the 
occultist  who  seeks  to  attain  to  the  third  degree  must  first 
become  a  white  magician. 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  63 

Nevertheless,  as  I  have  said,  the  initiates  in  the  third 
degree  have  guarded  this  secret  most  jealously,  and  apparent- 
ly for  the  reasons  I  have  assigned. 

The  first  and  second  degree,  however,  seem  to  have 
been  taught  publicity  in  symbolic  rites — such  as  for  instance 
in  that  much  misunderstood  dance  at  the  Columbian  Ex- 
position— the  Danse  du  Ventre.  It  was  noticeable  that  the 
Oriental  men,  one  and  all,  viewed  that  dance  with  serious 
and  at  times  reverant  gaze.  This  fact  was  brought  to  my 
notice  by  two  ladies  (school  teachers)  who  knew  absolutely 
nothing  of  the  Sex  Worship  symbolism  of  the  dance,  but 
who  had  concluded,  simply  from  thoughtful  observation, 
that  there  must  be  some  religious  and  pure-minded  motif 
back  of  it  all.  Nevertheless,  most  Americans  and  Europeans, 
whether  men  or  women,  failed  to  penetrate  beneath  the 
surface  of  this  markedly  symbolic  dance,  owing  to  the 
occidental  habit  of  thought  which  sees  naught  but  impurity 
in  the  most  important  and  sacred  function  of  our  nature. 
In  Oriental  countries,  however,  despite  their  being  "heathen" 
sex  is  looked  on  as  holy;  in  this  connection,  our  phrase, 
"Give  God  the  glory,"  takes  on  itself  a  vaster  significance 
than  is  ever  taught  from  our  pulpits. 

It  is  no  wonder,  then,  the  Oriental  occultists  should 
have  penetrated  at  an  early  date  to  the  underlying  principles 
of  marital  relations  on  the  Borderland.  From  their  lifelong 
habits  of  thought,  they  viewed  sex  as  simply  and  naturally 
as  we  should  view  the  circulation  of  our  own  blood — as  a 
curious  phenomenon  of  absorbing  personal  interest.  With 
no  false  shame  to  overcome,  they  were  fitted  to  receive  the 
higher  truths  concerning  this  subject,  whereas  our  Occidental 
mediums,  for  the  most  part,  receive  words  of  impurity  or  are 
misled  into  a  loose  life.  The  difference  is  due  to  the  exact 
antipodal  standpoints  of  Occidental  and  Oriental  psychics 
on  the  subject  of  the  holiness  of  sex. 

I  have  said  that  the  initiates  of  the  third  degree  seem 
to  have  made  this  the  inner  secret  of  their  mysteries,  the 
world  over  and,  that  they  have  always  jealously  guarded 
this  secret  from  the  masses  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  in  the  beginning  it  may  not  have  been  so,  but  that 


64  Theodore  Schroeder 

this  jealous  care  may  have  been  the  result  of  a  bitter  lesson 
learned  of  the  unwisdom  of  throwing  pearls  before  swine,  not 
because  the  swine  turn  and  rend  one — for  the  earnest  teacher 
of  truth  never  gives  his  own  danger  a  second  thought — 
but  because  the  swine  are  too  apt  to  soil  the  pearls  by  tramp- 
ling them  in  the  mire. 

If  it  be  asked  in  amazement,  how  this  teaching  of 
"Giving  God  the  Glory"  and  sharing  with  Him  the  supreme 
joy  of  the  marital  relation  could  become  so  degraded  by 
swinish  human  beings  as  to  cause  its  teachers  to  withhold 
it  in  future  from  the  masses,  I  answer: 

By  turning  it  into  a  commercial  transaction  with  God. 

The  piggish,  greedy  man,  learning  by  hearsay  of  the 
connubial  bliss  attending  the  Triune  partnership  with  God, 
pressed  eagerly  forward  with  one  thought  uppermost:  "I 
will  pay  God  cash  down  for  so  much  of  my  pleasure,  and 
I  mean  to  drive  a  close  bargain  with  him." 

The  voluptuary,  seeking  to  enhance  his  physical  sensa- 
tions, likewise  pressed  forward,  saying  to  himself  in  an  out- 
burst of  generosity:  "God  shall  receive  from  me  every  whit  as 
much  as  He  gives  me." 

The  sentimental,  but  selfish  mystic,  ever  yearning  for 
a  new  subjective  experience,  likewise  pressed  forward, 
thinking,  "I  shall  get  acquainted  with  God  on  intimate 
terms  by  dividing  up  my  pleasure  with  Him." 

Be  not  deceived :  God  is  not  mocked :  Whatsoever  a  man 
soweth  he  shall  reap.  And  each  of  these  types  failed  to  get 
what  they  expected  in  pleasure,  because  it  cannot  be  secured 
by  any  means  but  by  love. 

Now,  these  would-be  initiates  not  only  failed  (to  get  so 
much  physical  pleasure  for  so  much  tithing  paid  over  to  Him), 
but  they  tempted  by  that  very  failure  to  enter  upon  what  we 
may  call  (to  put  it  euphemistically)  a  bargain. 

The  nervous  system  had  been  wrought  to  too  high  a 
pitch  not  to  insist  upon  a  purchase  in  some  market — if  not 
in  God's  market,  then  in  the  Devil's.  Hence,  I  fancy  too 
often  abnormal  vices  and  abominations  of  ancient  Sodom 
and  Gomorrah  of  the  Orient  today  and  the  Roman  Empire, 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  65 

when  Christianity  first  turned  its  purifying  (though  salty) 
current  through  the  Augean  stables  of  latter-day  sex-worship. 
For  this  the  initiates  who  held  the  whole  truth,  among 
other  reasons  no  doubt,  usually  shrank  from  revealing  even 
glimpses  of  it  to  any  one  who  had  not  passed  a  long  pro- 
bation. According  to  the  Talmud,  the  ancient  Hebrews  had 
three  names  to  express  the  idea  of  God,  the  first  of  which 
was  interdicted  to  the  great  number.  Sages  taught  it  once  a 
week  to  their  sons  and  their  disciples.  The  second  was 
at  first  taught  to  everybody.  "But,"  said  Maimonides 
"when  the  number  of  the  ungodly  had  increased,  it  was 
intrusted  only  to  the  most  discreet  among  the  priests,  and 
they  repeated  it  in  a  low  tone  to  their  brethren,  while  the 
people  were  receiving  the  benediction."  The  third  name 
for  God  "contained",  says  Jacolliot,  "the  great  secret  of  the 
universal  soul,  and  stood  for,  if  we  may  so  express  it,  the 
highest  degree  of  initiation."  Regarding  this  last,  Mai- 
monides says : 

"It  was  only  taught  to  a  man  of  recognized  discretion, 
of  mature  age,  not  addicted  to  anger  or  intemperance,  a 
stranger  to  vanity,  and  gentle  and  pleasant  to  all  with 
whom  he  was  brought  in  contact." 

'  'Whoever,'  says  the  Talmud,  'has  been  made  ac- 
quainted with  this  secret  and  vigilantly  keeps  it  in  a  pure 
heart,  may  reckon  upon  the  love  of  God  and  the  favor  of 
men;  his  name  inspires  respect;  his  knowledge  is  in  no  danger 
of  being  forgotten,  and  he  is  the  heir  to  two  worlds,  that 
in  which  we  live  and  the  world  to  come.'  '  (Franck's 
"La  Kabbale.") 

All  of  which  applies  to  the  earthly  partner  of  a  celestial 
bride  or  bridegroom,  when  the  laws  of  correct  living  and 
clear  thinking  are  obeyed.  Those  who  know  this  secret 
and  vigilantly  keep  it  in  a  pure  heart  are  indeed  the  heir 
of  both  worlds,  for  they  dwell  upon  the  Borderland,  har- 
moniously adapting  their  lives  to  both  planes  of  existence 
and,  being  at  one  with  God,  they  can  each  say,  "If  God  be 
for  me,  who  can  be  against  me?"  Nor  is  the  reward  for 
making  a  proper  use  of  this  Great  Secret  confined  to  Borderland 


66  Theodore  Schroeder 

wedlock;  its  Kingdom  may  come  on  the  earthly  plane  itseU 
to  worthy  neophytes. 

It  was  probably  to  keep  the  knowledge  of  this  secret 
from  the  unworthy,  that  the  ancient  mysteries  of  Isis  and  of 
Eleusis  were  designed.  For  this  purpose,  also,  the  sacred 
scriptures  of  all  religions — not  excepting  the  Hebrew  and 
the  Christian — seem  to  have  introduced  stories  and  aphor- 
isms which  should  convey  one  meaning  to  an  outsider,  and 
quite  another  to  an  initiate. 

"Woe  to  the  man,  who  looks  upon  the  law  as  a  simple  re- 
cord of  events  expressed  in  ordinary  language,  for,  if  really 
that  is  all  it  contains,  we  can  frame  a  law  much  more  worthy 
of  admiration.  If  we  are  to  regard  the  ordinary  meaning 
of  the  words,  we  need  only  turn  to  human  laws  and  we  shall 
often  meet  with  a  greater  degree  of  elevation  *  *  *  *  Every 
word  of  the  law  contains  a  deep  and  sublime  mystery." 
(A.  Franck's  "La  Kabbale.") 

"If  the  law  were  composed  of  words  alone,  such  as  the 
words  of  Esau,  Hagar,  Laban,  and  others,  or  those  which 
were  uttered  by  Balaam's  ass  or  by  Balaam  himself,  then 
why  should  it  be  called  the  law  of  truth,  the  perfect  law, 
the  faithful  witness  of  God  himself?  Why  should  the  sages 
esteem  it  as  more  valuable  than  gold  or  precious  stones  ? 
"But  every  word  contains  a  higher  meaning;  every  test 
reaches  something  besides  the  events  which  it  seems  to 
describe.  This  superior  law  is  the  more  sacred,  it  is  the 
real  law."  (Jewish  Cabalists,  quoted  by  Jacolliot  Oc.  Sci.) 
The  following  occurs  in  the  Book  of  the  Pitris  (Pitris, 
according  to  Jacolliot,  is  the  name  applied  in  India  to  the 
spirits  of  the  dead)  with  whom  communication  has  long 
been  held,  after  the  fashion  of  modern  Spiritualism,  and  with 
the  same  attendant  phenomena. 

"The  sacred  scriptures  ought  not  to  be  taken  in  their 
apparent  meaning,  as  in  the  case  of  ordinary  books.  Of  what 
use  would  it  be  to  forbid  their  revelation  to  the  profane 
if  their  secret  meaning  were  contained  in  the  literal  sense 
of  the  language  usually  employed? 

"As  the  soul  is  contained  in  the  body, 
"As  the  almond  is  hidden  by  the  envelope. 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  67 

"As  the  sun  is  veiled  by  clouds, 

"As  the  garments  hide  the  body  from  view, 

"As  the  egg  is  contained  in  the  shell, 

"And  as  the  germ  rests  within  the  interior  of  the  seed, 

"So  the  sacred  law  has  its  body,  its  envelope,  its  cloud, 
its  garment,  its  shell,  which  hide  it  from  the  knowledge 
of  the  world.  *  *  *  * 

"You  who,  in  your  pride,  would  read  the  sacred  scrip- 
tures without  the  Guru's  assistance,  do  you  even  know  by  what 
letter  of  a  word  you  ought  to  begin  to  read  them — do  you 
know  the  secret  of  the  combination  by  twos  and  threes — 
do  you  know  when  the  final  letter  becomes  an  initial  and  the 
initial  becomes  final? 

"Woe  to  him  who  would  penetrate  the  real  meaning  of 
things  before  his  head  is  white  and  he  needs  a  cane  to 
guide  his  steps."  (Quoted  by  Jacolliot  Oc.  in  India.) 

The  closing  paragraph  becomes  significant,  when  we 
reflect  upon  the  danger  which  the  initiates  feared  would 
accrue  to  those  still  in  the  heyday  of  manhood's  passions, 
if  they  proved  unworthy  of  the  Great  Secret.  The  expression 
"The  secret  of  the  combination  by  twos  and  threes"  has 
probably  a  double  meaning  here — the  esoteric  meaning 
turning  upon  the  two  kinds  of  marital  partnership;  known 
to  the  initiates;  husband  and  wife  being  the  "combination 
by  two"  (in  the  second  degree);  and  husband,  wife  and 
God,  three  in  one,  a  sacred  trinity  in  unity,  being  the  "combi- 
nation by  three"  (in  the  third  and  highest  degree),  and 
they  who  have  once  realized  the  blessedness  of  this  triune 
partnership,  will  move  heaven  and  earth  to  make  it  re- 
newable at  will — so  much  sweeter  and  more  helpful  in  every 
way  is  it  than  the  mere  "combination  by  two." 

Now,  because  sex  is  distinctly  emotional  in  its  manifesta- 
tions, there  is  always  a  tendency,  with  failure  to  reach  the 
highest,  to  allow  the  emotions  to  slump  down,  as  it  were, 
to  a  lower  level.  Few  natures  are  so  supremely  self -con- 
trolled as  to  say,  at  a  critical  moment,  "the  highest — or 
nothing.  I  will  wait  for  that!  And  so,  the  types  I  have 
mentioned  above  as  failure,  the  piggish  man.  the  voluptuary 
and  the  sentimental,  selfish  mystic — when,  because  of  the 


68  Theodore  Schroeder 

delicate  balance  required  of  the  initiate  who  would  enter 
on  the  third  degree,  they  slipped  off  their  pivot,  fell  quite 
outside  the  circle  of  what  is  lawful,  sure  and  normal,  to  chaotic, 
unlawful  and  horribly  vile.  From  this,  dates  much  of  the 
black  magic.  And  this  was  the  controlling  subjective  influence 
which  made  witchcraft  a  very  real,  objective  terror 
to  the  victims  of  the  witches  during  the  Middle  Ages. 
There  is  little  doubt  that  many  of  the  witches  did  practice 
a  sorcery  of  the  most  diabolical  type — a  sorcery  based  upon 
the  principles  of  hypnotic  suggestion,  and  of  the  willful 
projection  of  the  astral  or  double;  a  sorcery,  whose  object 
was  to  cause  evil,  and  which  did  cause  evil  in  many  cases 
where  the  victims  were  not  protected  from  occult  mischief- 
working  by  living  pure  and  upright  lives;  a  sorcery,  finally, 
whose  impelling  motive  was  due  to  insane  hallucinations 
resulting  in  a  very  large  number  of  cases  from  having 
violated  the  laws  of  right  living  in  sex  relations  on  the 
Borderland.  It  is  probable  that  many  of  these  witches 
passed  the  second  degree,  while  few,  if  any,  gained  the  third 
— the  inner  degree  where  aspiration  in  mingled  purity  and 
passion  to  union  with  God  is  chief  factor.  Some  of  the 
attributes  of  a  witch  (we  need  not  enumerate  them  all: 
the  literature  of  the  subject  is  voluminous)  were:  1st,  that 
she  sustained  or  was  supposed  to  sustain  occult  sex  relations 
with  the  Prince  of  the  Powers  of  the  Air,  Yclept  the  Devil. 

2.  That  she  received  on  some  part  of  her  body  a  devil's 
mark  or  stigma,   which  was  his  seal  of  authority  over  her 
and    which    seems    to    have  been    hypnotically  rendered  in- 
sensible to   pain.     There  were  men,  who  did  a  business  in 
discovering  witches  by  pricking  a  suspected  woman's  body 
all  over  with  a  pin  until  they  found  some  place  insensible 
to   the   pain   of   the   prick,   when   they  would   triumphantly 
announce  this  to  be  the  "Devil's  Mark;" 

3.  That  the  Devil  or  one  of  his  imps  at  times  visited 
her  in  the  guise  of  some  animal — a  dog,  a  cat,  even  a  huge 
butterfly,  to  suck  some  part  of  her  body,  and  that,  whatever 
the  part  of  her  body  chosen,  it  and  no  other  spot  was  always 
resorted   to   by   the   impish    creature   thereafter      Sometimes 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  69 

witnesses  testify  to  seeing  these  animals  familiar  as  in  the 
case  of  a  witch  ill  in  bed  who  was  being  closely  watched. 
The  witness,  who  was  on  guard  testified  with  much 
detail  of  circumstance,  to  having  seen  a  huge  "fly,"  like  a 
miller,  which  buzzed  in  among  the  hair  of  the  sick  woman 
and  after  a  while  flew  away,  when  the  witch  called  to  the 
witness  to  lift  up  her  hair,  that  she  might  show  a  sore  place 
on  the  scalp  which  she  said,  was  where  the  Devil,  in  the 
form  of  a  fly,  was  wont  to  suck  her. 

4.  That  she  could  work  harm  to  people  .at  a  distance 
by  what  appears  to  have  been  hypnotic  suggestion  and  that 
she  usually  was  wickedly  and  viciously  inclined  to  do  this, 
at  will. 

5.  That  she  could  appear  in  what  seems  to  have  been 
her  double,  or  astral  form,  to  her  victims. 

Now,  regarding  this  last,  the  extremely  critical  and 
level-headed  Society  for  Psychical  Research  have  collected 
some  three  thousand  cases  of  apparitions  of  living  doubles 
at  the  present  day,  all  of  them  well  attested  by  witnesses. 
Most  of  these  apparitions  (some  of  which  were  so  like  real 
flesh  and  blood  as  to  be  taken  for  the  person  himself) 
according  to  the  Society's  records,  were  spontaneous,  only 
a  few  being  deliberately  self-induced — a  fact  which  indicates 
that  the  projection  of  the  double  is  probably  a  normal 
power  and  that  it  ought  to  be,  therefore,  not  so  very  difficult 
for  an  illiterate  old  woman  to  acquire.  A  few  apparitions 
of  doubles  seem  to  be  due  mostly  to  one  of  the  following 
causes : 

1.  Violent    shock,    as    a    runaway    accident,    danger  of 
drowning. 

2.  A  state  of  health  indicative  of  approaching  death, 
so  that  the  astral  form  t  (is  this  the  soul,  the  body  of  the 
immortal   spirit?)    seems   already   poised   for   flight. 

3.  The  moment  of  separation  of  soul  and  body,  espec- 
ially if  caused  by  drowning,   suffocation,   contusion  on  the 
head,  wounds  received  in  battle,  etc. 

4.  Falling    into    "a    brown    study":    gazing    fixedly    at 
an  object  in  an  abstracted  way  (self-hypnotization) ;  listen- 
ing  abstractedly   to    a   continuous   and   monotonous   sound. 


70  Theodore  Schroeder 

5.  Falling  asleep  with  an  earnest  desire  fixed  in  one's 
mind  to  visit  such  or  such  a  person  or  place. 

Any  of  these  may  be  induced  accidentally  and,  so 
far  as  we  know,  without  the  conscious  will  of  the  ego. 

6.  Deliberately    willing,    under    some    of    the     above 
circumstances,    to   have   one's   double    appear   at   such   and 
such   a  place.      This  act  may    or    may    not    include — ac- 
cording  to   the   extent   of   the   psychic's   training — an    after 
memory  of  the  event. 

From  the  above  it  will  be  seen  that  the  apparition 
of  the  double,  whether  spontaneously  or  deliberately  in- 
duced, seems  to  be  brought  about  by  a  sudden  focusing 
of  mental  force.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  some  of  the 
surest  vouchers  for  the  material  objective  substantiality 
of  the  world  beyond  the  grave  will  be  found  among  the 
phenomena  attending  the  appearance  of  the  double;  inasmuch 
as  the  double,  when  most  clearly  manifesting,  comforts  it- 
self like  an  earthly  being,  with  earthly  necessities,  and 
if  this  double  be,  as  appears,  identical  with  the  soul-body 
which  quits  our  mortal  frame  at  death,  we  have  only  to 
collate  and  compare  instances  of  the  earthly  double,  and 
acquire  the  art  of  projecting  our  own  double  intelligently 
and  without  loss  of  memory  while  in  earth-life,  and  we 
shall  know  beyond  all  doubt  what  its  habits  of  ..thought, 
its  appetites  and  necessities  are  likely  to  be  beyond  the 
grave. 

In  the  witchcraft  days,  what  is  called  repercussion 
was  a  common  phenomenon.  That  is,  the  witch  who 
appeared  in  astral  form  to  her  victims,  if  wounded  with  a 
knife,  might  be  afterwards  found  to  have  sustained  a  similar 
wound  in  her  physical  body.  This  carries  out  the  idea 
of  the  Theosophists  and  other  occultists,  that  thought 
has  power  over  matter,  and  that  our  physical  frame  is  in 
reality  moulded  by  the  spirit  and  soul  which  inhabit  it. 
Col.  Olcott  gives  an  interesting  account  of  repercussion  in 
his  own  case. 

Instances  are  not  wanting  where  fthe  .'earthly 
double  has  shown  that  its  sex  capacity  remains  apparently 
unaffected  by  temporary  separation  from  the  body.  The 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  71 

following  case,  though  probably  founded  on  the  falsehood 
of  a  clever  woman  (S.  V.  Fecondite),  shows  with  what  serious 
respect  the  phenomenon  of  the  double  was  viewed  some 
three  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago. 

In  the  "Dictionaire  Infernal,"  there  is  a  report  of 
a  trial  before  the  Parliament  of  Grenoble,  in  which  the 
question  was,  whether  a  certain  infant  could  be  declared 
legitimate  which  was  born  after  the  husband  had  been  absent 
from  his  wife  four  years.  The  wife  asserted  that  the  baby 
was  the  offspring  of  a  dream,  in  which  she  had  a  vivid  idea 
that  her  wandering  spouse  had  returned  to  love  and  duty. 
Midwives  and  physicians  were  consulted,  and  reported  on  the 
subject.  As  a  result,  the  Parliament  ordained  that  the  in- 
fant should  be  adjudged  legitimate,  and  its  mother  should  be 
regarded  as  a  true  and  honourable  wife.  The  judgment  bears 
date  13th  of  February,  1537.  (Inmen's  " Ancient  Faiths 
and  Modern,"  p.  285,  footnote.) 

The  following  incident  was  told  to  me  by  a  gentleman 
who  had  heard  it  from  the  lips  of  one  of  the  parties.  For 
obvious  reasons,  I  suppress  localities: 

"A  gentleman  who  was  intensely  dark,  of  a  Spanish 
type,  was  in  love  with  a  girl  of  the  true  blonde  type. 
They  never  married  but  later  on  she  married  someone  else 
and  moved  to  another  part  of  the  country.  One  night  this 
gentleman  had  a  very  vivid  dream,  in  which  he  fancied  him- 
self to  be  her  husband.  So  real  seemed  the  experience  that 
he  could  scarcely  convince  himself  on  waking,  that  he  had 
not  actually  just  come  from  her  presence.  Several  years 
later,  he  happened  to  be  in  that  part  of  the  country,  and 
bethought  himself  of  hunting  up  his  former  ladylove.  He 
found  her  husband  to  be  a  decided  blonde,  like  herself. 
A  little  child,  a  decided  brunette,  ran  up  to  him,  exclaiming 
joyfully,  "Papa,  Papa!"  "Well!"  laughed  the  host,  "I  am 
glad  that  she  has  found  Fomeone  to  call  "Papa",  for  she 
steadfastly  refuses  to  recognize  me  as  such."  Whereupon  the 
lady  appropriately  fainted.  The  visitor  learned  afterwards 
by  making  inquiries  of  her,  that  she  had  had  a  dream  similar 
to  his  at  the  same  time,  and  just  nine  months  previous  to 
the  birth  of  the  child." 


72  Theodore  Schroeder 

Was  this  a  case  of  repercussion?  Did  his  double  meet 
her  double  (but  not  her  physical  self)  on  the  astral  plane 
and  was  that  thought-world  more  powerful  in  moulding  her 
child  than  was  her  physical  environment  as  a  wife  ?  Or  was 
it  merely  a  telepathic  impression  conveyed  from  his  mind  to 
hers  with  sufficient  vividness  to  "mark"  the  child?  I  may 
here  remark,  that  I  do  not  consider  the  theory  that  he  was 
the  physical  father  of  the  child,  as  it  seems  to  me  that 
that  would  be  a  violation  of  the  natural  laws  of  Borderland. 
Nevertheless,  if  he  really  was  the  physical  father,  the  stories 
would  only  be  in  keeping  with  the  stories  of  the  giant 
progeny  from  angelic  fathers,  and  the  stories  of  women 
confined  in  high  towers  and  yet  becoming  pregnant  by  a 
celestial  visitor.  In  the  case  of  Danae,  her  visitor  material- 
ized as  a  shower  of  gold — quite  after  the  fashion  of  modern 
apparitions  of  spiritualistic  seances  where  the  spirits 
often  materialize  as  floating  masses  of  radiant  mist. 
At  recent  seances,  too,  trained  scientific  observers  have 
perceived  the  medium's  double  (I  now  speak  of  mediums 
who  are  not  fraudulent  and  who  are  willing  to  submit  to 
experimental  tests)  partially  or  wholly  dissociated  from  the 
medium's  physical  self.  Col.  Olcott  gives  an  interesting 
account  of  his  double  oozing  through  the  walls  of  Mrs. 
Blavatsky's  room  on  its  way  to  the  sitting-room  to  add 
three  words  to  a  MS.  on  which  he  had  been  busily  writing 
just  before  retiring.  Both  the  earthly  double  and  the  celestial 
spirit  appear  to  possess  this  faculty  of  oozing  through  blank 
walls.  May  they  not  be  one  and  the  same?  In  that  case, 
we  see  how  easy  it  may  be  to  confound  spirit  bridegrooms 
from  the  world  beyond  the  grave  (who  cannot  beget  children 
on  the  Borderland  because  this  would  be  a  violation  of 
natural  law),  and  astral  doubles  of  earthly  lovers  who 
can  stimulate  the  begetting  of  children  upon  the  astral 
double  of  an  earthly  woman  so  vividly  as  to  mark  the  child 
of  her  lawful  husband  and  herself  with  the  likeness  of  the 
astral  lover. 

At  this  point  it  may  be  objected  that  such  information 
as  I  am  here  giving  should  not  be  spread  broadcast,  lest 
unscrupulous  libertines  take  advantage  of  this  power  of 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  73 

projecting  the  double  to  get  innocent  girls  into  their  power, 
since  high  towers  and  bolted  doors  appear  to  offer 
no  barrier  to  the  double's  entrance.  It  is  precisely  for 
this  reason  that  this  information  should  be  widely  circulated, 
in  order  that  these  possibilities  may  be  made  known  to  the 
general  public  and  guarded  against.  The  present  flood  of  Theo- 
sophic  and  other  popular  occult  literature  as  well  as  the 
published  records  of  the  S.  P.  R.  have  already  placed  the 
knowledge  of  this  power  within  the  reach  of  the  libertine,  if 
he  chooses  to  avail  himself  of  it.  When  he  can  have  this  for 
the  asking,  it  is  high  time  that  the  general  public  know  some- 
thing of  it  also,  as  well  as  of  the  fact  that  correct  living  and 
clear  thinking  will  always  protect  us  from  evil  induced  by 
occult  means.  It  is  an  interesting  question,  however,  as  to 
whether  children  could  really  be  begotten  by  a  double  upon  a 
virgin,  or,  as  in  the  case  tried  before  the  Grenoble  parliament 
upon  a  married  woman  whose  husband  is  away;  I  am  inclined 
to  think  not,  since  the  double  is  for  the  time  being  on  a 
different  plane  of  matter  from  the  physical  body  of  the 
woman,  being,  in  fact,  in  the  same  world  as  it  will  be  after 
death;  so  that  it  must  obey  the  law  of  the  Borderland 
quite  as  much  as  if  it  were  an  angelic  bridegroom,  which 
it  to  sow  no  seed,  inasmuch  as  no  harvest  can  be  reaped 
therefrom.  But  in  this  case,  what  becomes  of  the  scientific 
basis  of  such  stories  as  Danae  and  other  virgins  who  become 
the  mothers  of  children  by  a  Borderland  lover — whether 
earthly  double  or  heavenly  angel?  There  is  but  one  way 
so  far  as  I  see,  by  which  a  Borderland  bridegroom  could 
beget  a  child  by  an  earthly  woman.  The  woman  must  live 
each  moment  in  strict  obedience  to  the  laws  of  her  earth- 
life  and  also  of  his  heavenly  life.  She  must  be  capable  of 
appreciating  the  intellectual  thought  of  his  advanced  world. 
She  must  understand  and  live  in  accordance  with  the  higher 
code  of  ethics  current  in  his  realm.  She  must  neglect  no 
earthly  duty;  she  must  be  conversant  with  the  intellectual 
thought- world  of  her  earthly  associates;  she  must  not  crush 
out  a  single  instinct  of  her  nature  but  properly  use  every 
physical  appetite  and  passion  to  round  out  a  symmetrical 
earthly  life.  When  emergencies  arise  on  either  the  earthly 


74  Theodore  Schroeder 

plane  or  on  the  Borderland,  she  must  never  make  a  mistake, 
for  to  do  so,  will  cause  the  lines  of  communication  to  waver 
and  presently  to  part.  In  short,  her  life,  judged  not  only 
by  the  highest  earthly  standing  but  by  the  more  advanced 
standard  in  the  world  beyond  the  grave,  must  be  absolutely 
perfect,  if  she  is  to  conceive,  gestate  for  nine  long  months 
and  give  birth  to  a  child  begotten  by  a  Borderland  father, 
that  is,  she  must  be  psychically  on  the  same  plane  with  him, 
and  at  the  same  time  fulfill  the  laws  of  both  planes  and  that 
without  a  single  break.  Only  thus  were  the  laws  on  the 
Borderland  obeyed. 

The  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  its  dogma  of  The  Immacu- 
late Conception,  claims  perfection  for  the  blessed  Virgin  Mary. 
In  so  doing,  it  shows  its  wisdom.  Though  I  am  by  no  means 
a  Romanist,  I  emphatically  say,  that  from  the  occult  stand- 
point, the  immaculate  life  of  Mary  for  a  long  period  prior  to 
the  Annunciation  and  until  at  least  the  birth  of  Jesus,  is  the 
only  foundation  upon  which  the  possibility  of  the  mysterious 
conception  of  Jesus  as  a  Borderland  child  can  rest. 
Having  once  attained  this  high  plane,  it  is  unlikely  that  she 
would  ever  descend  to  a  lower  plane  afterward:  so  that, 
accurately  speaking,  the  Roman  Catholic  doctrine  of  her 
immaculate  life  must  have  been  absolutely  perfect  on  all 
points,  or  she  could  not  have  conceived  a  child  by  the  spirit 
of  God;  for  God  does  not  break  his  own  laws.  Nor  is  it 
likely  that  the  heavenly  bridegroom  would  break  his  laws 
in  order  to  beget  a  child  upon  an  earthly  woman  provided 
that  woman  were  suitably  trained  for  sometime  for  the 
occult  espousal,  and  provided  that  God  has  a  tangible  form, 
as  He  appeared  to  Moses  to  have  when  he  had  Moses  remain 
in  the  cleft  of  a  rock  while  he  passed  by.  (Exodus  XXXIII, 
21,  23.)  This  is  the  strength  of  the  one  Catholic  doctrine 
concerning  Mary's  stainlessness  of  life;  and  from  the 
Apocryphal  Gospels,  it  appears  that  Mary  had  had  the 
advantage  of  being  brought  up  as  an  orphan  in  the  temple 
under  the  eyes  of  the  priests.  It  was  customary  for 
her  to  see  and  talk  with  angels  and  to  receive  food  from 
them  before  her  espousal  to  Joseph.  My  own  idea  of  it, 
however,  is  that  such  a  conception — if  conception 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  75 

there  were — would  require  Mary's  mentality  to  rise  not  only 
to  the  standard  of  an  angel  but  to  the  omniscience  and  all 
pervading  tenderness  of  God,  in  order  for  her  to  be  so 
thoroughly  his  spouse  on  the  Borderland  as  to  conceive  and 
bear  a  child  to  him  *  *  *  *  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
interesting  to  note  in  connection  with  this,  the  record  in  the 
Apocryphal  Gospels  as  to  the  appearance  of  an  angel  visitor 
to  Mary  in  the  guise  of  a  handsome  youth,  and  the  opinion 
expressed  to  Joseph  by  the  virgins  left  in  charge  of  her 
during  Joseph's  absence,  that  it  was  the  angel  who  had 
made  her  pregnant. 

Perhaps  when  we  come  into  harmonious  rapport  with 
the  mystical  theory,  popularized  by  the  school  of  divine 
science  and  other  mystics,  that  each  one  of  us  is  a  part 
of  the  universal  mind,  and  that  that  mind  may  know  all 
things  in  the  universe  we  might  allow  even  this  on  the 
Borderland.  However,  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  has 
seemingly  provided  for  the  high  standard  of  mentality  re- 
quired from  a  spouse  of  Divine  Science  on  the  Borderland 
by  ascribing  to  Mary  not  only  the  name,  but  the  attributes 
of  "Mother  of  God." 

In  "The  perfect  way,  or  the  Finding  of  Christ,"  written 
by  Anna  Kingsford  and  Edward  Maitland,  occurs  a  remark 
about  "the  notion  far  from  uncommon,  that  by  abjuring 
the  ordinary  marriage  relation,  and  devoting  herself  wholly 
to  her  astral  associate,  a  woman  may,  in  the  most  literal 
sense  become  an  immaculate  mother  of  Christs."  It  is 
needless  to  add  that  the  authors  deprecate  this,  but  their 
remarks  show  their  total  misapprehension  of  Borderland 
sex-relations,  since  it  is  only  between  husband  and  wife  that 
those  relations  can  exist  objectively,  all  else  is  but  sub- 
jective illusion.  And,  therefore,  the  command  of  Mary's 
Heavenly  Bridegroom  that  Joseph  was  not  to  approach 
her  as  a  husband  until  after  the  birth  of  the  mysteriously 
begotten  child  would  be  strictly  in  keeping  with  Borderland 
laws,  because  it  is  the  highest  ideal  of  both  worlds. 

The  mediaeval  witch,  as  well  as  the  Blessed  Virgin, 
had  her  chance  of  Borderland  nuptials  on  a  high  plane; 
but,  unlike  Mary,  she  failed  to  pass  those  ordeals  which 


76  Theodore  Schroeder 

require  correct  living  and  clear  thinking  on  the  part  of  the 
earthly  psychic.  In  the  first  place,  the  witch  (poor  woman) 
lived  in  days  when  the  physiological  relations  of  husband 
and  wife  occupied  a  far  lower  place  in  popular  estimation 
than  it  did  in  the  days  of  Mary,  and  moreover,  in  the 
Orient,  Mary's  home,  the  relation  of  husband  and  wife 
had  then  and  still  has,  a  holiness  on  its  physiological  side 
which  is  foreign  to  European  or  American  habits  of  thought. 
When  the  peculiar  psychical  experiences  of  the  witch  set 
in,  therefore,  she  naturally  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that, 
first  they  were  sinful;  second,  that,  being  sinful,  they  were 
the  work  of  Satan.  These  assumptions  were  a  departure 
from  clear,  unprejudiced  thinking,  and  from  that  moment 
began  her  diabolical  illusions,  and  she  saw  monsters,  hob- 
nobbed with  imps,  was  lashed  by  scorpions,  etc.,  etc.,  to 
the  full  extent  of  her  willingness  to  receive  these  illusions 
as  objective  realities.  The  poor  creatures  indeed,  had  not 
our  advantages  in  the  perusal  of  records  of  hypnotism  and 
of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  and  would  have  been 
sadly  puzzled  to  draw  the  line  between  subjective  illusion 
and  objective  materialization.  Nevertheless,  her  angel  lover 
was  with  her  when  she  thought  him  the  Devil.  He  comforted 
her  in  her  poverty  and  loneliness  (many  of  these  witches, 
remember,  were  old  women,  whose  lives  had  been  the  bare, 
dreary,  lives  of  the  terrible  poor)  and  he  promised  her 
such  influence  among  her  neighbors  as  she  longed  for  most. 
This  was  an  ordeal,  had  she  but  known  it,  which,  if  passed 
successfully,  would  have  brought  her  a  higher  and  sweeter 
pleasure.  Some  there  were,  here  and  there,  who  seem  to 
have  chosen  the  better  part,  and  to  have  become  "white 
witches,"  capable  of  clairvoyance,  of  healing  human  beings 
and  cattle  of  strange  diseases,  forecasting  the  future  and 
the  like.  But  usually,  these  poor  old  women  had  been  so 
embittered  against  selfish  or  heedless  neighbors,  that  the 
influence  they  longed  for  most  was  to  pay  back  their  wrongs 
(real  or  supposed)  with  interest.  Here  again,  they  broke 
the  occult  law  which  calls  for  correct  living  on  the  part  of 
the  psychic,  and  trod  the  downward  path  of  hatred  and 
diabolism.  In  many  cases,  no  doubt  the  psychical  experiences 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  77 

of  a  witch  started  from  this  fierce  desire  to  be  revenged 
upon  those  who  had  slighted  her.  She  probably  began  with 
some  simple  form  of  self-hypnotization  imparted  to  her  by 
a  neighbor  who  had  already  acquired  some  proficiency  in 
the  art.  Once  she  had  accomplished  this,  the  astral  world 
lay  open  wide  before  her  with  all  its  illusions  or  all  its 
realities,  according  to  how  she  proved  worthy  of  one  or  the 
other.  Sometimes,  no  doubt,  she  struggled  upward  to  benevo- 
lent thoughts  and  prayers  for  help  in  resisting  temptation  and 
was  accordingly  rewarded  with  true  occult  power  and  with 
union  with  her  angelic  mate  who  was  both  her  husband  and  her 
guardian.  That  she  thought  him  the  Devil,  partially  inter- 
fered with  the  physical  strengthening  and  psychical  happi- 
ness which  that  union  brought;  while  he,  on  his  part,  kept 
steady  watch  over  her  infirmities,  always  ready  to  help  the 
slightest  impulse  of  her  spirit  to  rise  to  higher  things,  seeing 
as  only  angels  see,  beneath  that  misshapen  earthly  body, 
the  soul,  the  astral  body,  which,  despite  the  temporary  dis- 
figurements caused  by  evil  thoughts,  is  ever  young  and 
fair,  and  waiting  patiently  throughout  her  poor,  stumbling, 
sinful  life,  as  only  a  man  who  truly  loves  a  wife  can  wait, 
for  the  time  when  she  will  live  down  her  mistakes,  and  see 
as  clearly  as  himself. 

If  it  be  objected  that  this  occult  wedlock  with  an 
angel  whom  she  ignorantly  mistook  for  a  Devil,  brought  her 
misfortune,  I  answer:  Not  unless  she  broke  the  law  of  correct 
living  by  trying  to  turn  her  occult  powers  to  base  purposes, 
or  failed  to  keep  clear-headed. 

But  in  that  case? 

In  that  case,  also,  her  guardian  angel  took  her  through 
the  deep  waters  and  along  the  rugged,  toilsome  mountain 
path  for  her  evolution,  that  she  might  be  made  perfect 
through  suffering.  Are  we  not  all  convinced  that  that  is 
what  God  means  by  putting  us,  who  are  not  witches,  in  a 
world  where  each  of  us  has  to  wrestle  with  adverse  cir- 
cumstances in  betterness  of  spirit?  In  our  inmost  being  we 
recognize  God's  wisdom  in  our  being  taken  through  sorrows, 
temptations  and  conflicts,  for  thus  only  can  we  grow  strong 
and  rise  to  our  full  stature  as  made  in  His  likeness.  And 


78  Theodore  Schroeder 

to  the  witch,  Heaven  was  no  less  merciful  than  to  us,  in 
that  it  forced  ordeals  upon  her  which,  when  she  passed  them, 
brought  her  happiness,  but  which,  when  she  failed  to  pass 
them,  brought  her  suffering. 

It  is  noticeable  that  most  of  the  witches  who  came 
to  grief,  and  who  confessed  to  intercourse  with  the  Devil, 
referred  to  certain  ceremonies  customary  at  each  "Sabbath" 
although  records  of  witchcraft  point  rather  to  subjective 
illusion  of  performing  abominable  rites,  which  symbolized 
abnormal  vices.  For  details,  the  reader  may  refer  to  almost 
any  work  on  witchcraft.  He  will  there  see,  that  with  all  the 
fuss  made  by  the  judges  and  persecutors  about  this  inter- 
course with  Satan,  there  was  very  little  of  real  impurity, 
and  what  there  was,  seems  to  have  been  entirely  subjective — 
the  illusion  of  an  insane  imagining.  In  short,  the  witch, 
as  well  as  other  brides  of  angelic  lovers,  was  evidently 
far  from  impure-minded  by  nature  at  the  start,  and  this, 
too,  in  an  age  of  vulgar  expressions,  coarse  ideas  and  from 
which  even  the  genius  of  a  Shakspeare  did  not  escape  with- 
out contamination.  Yet  these  women  were  mostly  illiterate 
and  miserably  poor.  It  is  probable  that  their  poverty, 
however,  had  been  their  educator  in  ascetic  deprivation 
and  in  bearing  up  under  slights  from  more  fortunate  neigh- 
bors, and  so  had  laid  the  foundations  of  that  stern  control 
of  self  which  is  absolutely  necessary  in  the  true  occultist. 
That  this  feature — their  feelings  under  slights  received 
from  neighbors — played  an  important  part  in  their  thoughts 
and  consequently  in  their  development,  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that  many  of  their  attempts  (real  or  supposed)  at  bewitch- 
ing, date  from  an  unkind  refusal  of  a  neighbor  to  give  them 
a  bowl  of  soup  or  an  old  shirt.  Ill-temper,  then,  morose 
broodings  over  wrongs,  general  sourness  of  spirit,  were 
not  the  least  important  of  the  causes  which  turned  those 
earthly  partners  of  angelic  bridegrooms  into  devil-handed 
witches. 

Another  cause  seems  to  have  been  their  failure  to 
think  clearly  and  without  prejudice.  Poor  creatures!  They 
were  nearly  all  of  them  prejudiced  (i.  e.,  "pre-judgers") 
from  beginning  to  end.  They  pre- judged  angels  to  be  the 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  79 

Devil;  they  pre-judged  the  monsters  imagined  by  their  own 
sub-consciousness  to  be  real;  they  pre-judged  the  wedlock 
into  which  they  entered  on  the  Borderland  to  be  sinful; 
they  pre-judged  their  mysterious  visitor  to  be  a  tempter 
to  lead  them  away  from  religion  and  the  church;  they  pre- 
judged him  as  requiring  unhallowed  rites — dimly  remember- 
ed survivals  from  the  ancient  Sex  Worship,  too  often  on 
its  vilest  side;  they  pre-judged  him,  as  the  means  of  ignoble 
satisfactions  of  their  hatred  and  their  animal  desires.  And 
thus  they  sank  to  diabolism. 

There  was  yet  another  cause — not  so  much  of  evil 
as  of  illusions.  This  was  the  "Devil's  mark"  that  special 
mark  of  his  with  which  they  supposed  themselves  stamped 
on  some  part  of  their  bodies.  With  this,  we  may  classify 
the  spot  at  which  the  Devil  or  one  of  his  imps  was  said  to 
suck  them,  and  also  the  peculiarity  that  their  bridegroom  in 
his  marital  relations,  chilled  them  as  though  with  ice. 

There  are  many  phases  of  occult  sensitiveness.  The 
ear  for  the  clairaudient,  the  eye  for  the  clairvoyant,  the 
easily  swayed  arm  and  hand  for  the  writing  medium,  are  the 
three  physical  organs  through  which  communications  usually 
reach  us.  But  for  the  wife  of  a  heavenly  bridegroom,  the 
nerves  of  touch,  it  is  evident,  must  be  the  chief  focuses  of 
occult  sensitiveness.  Now,  in  order  that  the  delicate  balance 
of  nerve  sensation  be  maintained,  it  is  important  that  such 
a  psychic  distinguish  readily  between  real  touches  and 
illusory  touches,  between  objective  realities  impinging  upon 
the  ends  of  her  nerves  and  hypnotic  suggestions,  either  self- 
induced  or  induced  by  an  outside  intelligence,  say  by  her 
spirit  bridegroom.  And  not  only  must  she  learn  to  distin- 
guish thus  between  real  and  unreal  sensations,  but  she  must 
also  learn  to  resist  all  hypnotic  suggestion  to  feel  sensations 
which  do  not  exist  or  which  are  unlawful.  No  psychic 
can  be  considered  thoroughly  self-controlled  who  has 
not  acquired  this  power  of  resistance  to  hypnotic  suggestion 
of  unlawful  touches  or  of  unreal  things  as  real.  No  psychic's 
testimony  can  be  considered  reliable  so  long  as  she  fails  to 
distinguish  between  genuine  and  illusory  touches.  So  long  as 
she  is  lacking  in  any  of  these  essentials  to  the  wife  of  a 


80 


Theodore  Schroeder 


heavenly  bridegroom,  just  so  long  will  her  guardian  persist 
in  putting  her  through  a  course  of  training — a  training 
which  she  must  undergo  until  she  passes  her  examination 
and  is  promoted  into  a  higher  class,  there  to  take  up  still 
more  advanced  lessons  in  psychic  discrimination  and  psychic 
self-control. 

Now,  the  "Devil's  Marks"  and  the  "sucking"  were 
both,  so  I  hold,  illusory  sensations  which  the  witch  failed 
either  to  classify  or  to  conquer,  but  to  which  she  mistakenly 
succummbed.  When  the  supposed  Devil's  imp  showed 
non-sensitiveness  to  pin-pricks,  it  was  probably  a  case  of 
auto-suggestion — or,  in  the  case  of  some,  a  hypnotic  dulling 
to  pain  caused  (oftentimes  in  mercy)  by  the  angel  guardian. 

Of  the  same  illusory  character  is  that  phenomenon  which 
has  so  puzzled  all  the  writers  on  witchcraft — the  icy  chilli- 
ness of  the  sperm.  This  experience  is  entirely  subjective; 
because  it  is  forbidden  by  Borderland  laws;  to  evoke  a  nervous 
energy  for  no  definite  result  and  as  a  harvest  in  offspring  on 
the  Borderland  cannot  be  produced,  it  is  breaking  Borderland 
laws  to  sow  the  seed.  The  very  fact  that  the  Devil,  who  is 
supposed  to  be  a  deity  of  fire,  cold  in  the  Borderland  marital 
union,  ought  to  have  shown  his  earthly  partner  that  it  was  an 
illusion.  And  the  psychic  who  expects  or  thinks  to  enact 
a  forbidden  experience  on  the  Borderland,  has  only  her  own 
ignorance  to  thank  for  the  illusion. 

Incubi  and  Succubae,  evil  spirits  who  were  supposed  to 
force  themselves  as  lovers  upon  both  men  and  women,  played 
an  important  part  in  witchcraft  days.  Deformed  children 
were  supposed  to  have  sprung  of  such  a  union.  Luther 
believed  implicitly  in  this.  Virtuous  women  seemed  to  be 
especially  subject  to  the  attacks  of  incubi,  and  this  was 
looked  on  as  attesting  the  cunning  of  Satan,  who  thus  aimed 
at  those  noted  for  purity  of  life.  It  rarely,  if  ever,  seems  to 
have  occurred  to  people  in  those  days  that  a  virtuous  woman, 
reasonably  clear-headed,  is  a  being  who  is  under  especial  angelic 
protection,  and  that  when  such  a  woman  was  persistently 
singled  out  by  a  spirit  for  lover-like  attentions,  it  must  have 
been  owing  to  the  favor  of  Heaven,  and  not  to  the  malignity 
of  devils.  That  these  attentions  became  a  great  annoyance 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  81 

at  last  was  only  because  the  woman  either  broke  the  moral 
law  in  some  way,  or  because  prejudiced  against  every  such 
being  as  an  emissary  of  Satan.  In  time  by  the  workings 
of  the  laws  of  Borderland,  she  who  through  natural  curi- 
osity and  romantic  sentiment  at  first  hearkened  to  the  angel 
lover,  and  afterward  through  the  failure  to  live  aright  or 
think  clearly  felt  bound  to  reject  him  as  a  devil  became 
subject  to  hallucinations  and  also  in  some  cases,  to  annoy- 
ing physical  manifestations.  Some  picturesque  stories  have 
been  told  of  such  women  to  whom  the  spirit  lover  has  ap- 
peared in  the  guise  of  a  handsome  youth  vainly  wooing 
his  earthly  love  night  after  night.  The  stories  usually  wind 
up  with  an  account  of  fearful  persecutions  at  the  hands 
of  the  rejected  lover,  who  thus  by  his  malignity  reveals 
himself  as  the  Devil.  But  the  cases  of  a  spirit  lover  who  has 
once  been  received  (whether  as  husband  or  only  communi- 
cating spirit),  it  would  seem  as  though  his  hypnotic  sug- 
gestions often  outweighed  those  of  the  priest.  Sometimes 
the  priest  is  appealed  to  but  not  always  successfully.  The 
Roman  Catholic  Church  has  a  regular  rite  to  exorcise 
demons  and  is  probably  successful  with  the  psychic  through 
hypnotic  suggestion.  But  in  the  case  of  a  spirit  lover  who 
has  once  been  received  (whether  as  husband  or  by  com- 
municating spirit)  it  would  seem  as  though  his  hypnotic 
suggestion  often  outweighed  that  of  the  priest  to  still 
exorcise  the  fiend  in  cases  of  demoniacal  possession.  But 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  very  lingering  of  these 
subjective  experiences  indicates  that  her  psychic  hallucina- 
tions were  often  not  only  due  to  hypnotic  suggestions  by 
her  spirit  lover,  but  were  also  the  result  recorded  in  her 
subliminal  consequences  of  a  veridical  phenomena  which 
she  at  first  encourages,  whether  through  harmless  curiosity, 
or  through  the  romantic  and  tender  sentiment  of  a  pure 
heart,  or  through  the  grosser  impulses  arising  from  a 
luxuriant  and  untrained  imagination,  matters  not.  When 
her  season  of  ordeals  set  in  and  she  was  obliged  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  illusory  and  the  real,  in  order  to 
maintain  communication  with  her  interesting  visitor,  she 
either  grew  alarmed  at  the  phenomena  of  the  ordeals  or 


82 


Theodore  Schroeder 


else  rashly  assumed  the  whole  thing  to  be  diabolical.  From 
this  time  on,  it  were  indeed  strange  if  she  should  fail  to 
see  subjectively  what  she  expected — i.  e.,  the  Devil.  All 
in  vain  now  was  it  for  her  to  exclaim  in  terror  or  indigna- 
tion, "I  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  you!"  Her  angelic 
lover  had  indeed  ceased  to  communicate;  but  her  subcon- 
sciousness  had  not  ceased  to  vibrate  along  the  lines  of 
psychical  illusion;  and  unless  she  possessed  great  self-con- 
trol and  had  her  subconscious  nature  well  in  hand,  time  and 
time  only,  could  work  a  cure  unless,  indeed,  she  should 
implicitly  submit  her  inner  self  to  the  priest  or  to  some 
other  earthly  human  being  as  her  hypnotizer,  in  which 
case,  it  was  a  change  from  the  hypnotic  control  of  a  clear- 
seeing  angel,  to  that  of  a  more  or  less  blind  fallible  earthly 
man,  who  may  or  may  not  take  undue  advantage  of  the 
power  placed  in  his  hands  over  her  mainsprings  of  action. 
When  one  (1)  considers  that  every  woman  who  enters  a 
convent  is  pledged  to  a  mystic  union  with  a  heavenly  bride- 
groom, denominated  Christ;  (2)  that  the  union  more  often 
than  the  public  is  aware,  becomes  so  objectively  real  that 
the  confessor  feels  obliged  to  term  it  "Congresus  cum 
daemonis";  (3)  that  ignorance  on  the  men's  part  of  Border- 
land laws  will  render  her  experience  fantastic  or  diabolical; 
(4)  that  her  deliverance  from  these  experiences  may  be 
secured  by  a  change  in  the  hypnotizer,  from  an  unseen 
angel  to  a  visible  earthly  priest:  We  see  what  a  power 
resides  with  confessors  to  mould  the  minds  of  the  nuns  to 
carry  out  his  hypnotic  suggestions  for  the  glory  of  the 
church.  For  the  person  who  has  been  hypnotized  by 
spirits,  and  who  has  not  acquired  the  power  of  resisting 
hypnotic  suggestion,  will  more  readily  yield  to  an  earthly 
hypnotizer.  That  the  angelic  lover  should  force  himself  upon 
her  as  an  incubus  against  her  will  is  contrary  to  Borderland 
laws;  for  in  the  world  beyond  the  Borderland  (the  world 
beyond  the  grave),  it  is  reckoned  a  sin  for  a  woman  to 
have  aught  to  do  with  husband  or  lover  save  for  love's  sake ; 
and  hence  the  idea  that  women  may  be  forced  into  a  marital 
union  on  the  Borderland  is  totally  incorrect  inasmuch  as 
the  highest  standards  of  social  and  ethical  duty  in  both 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  83 

worlds  must  be  lived  up  to  by  the  two  who  meet  upon  the 
borders  of  the  two  worlds.  Rationalists  have  tried  to  ex- 
plain the  spirit  bride  and  spirit  bridegroom  as  a  nightmare 
arising  from  a  plethoric  condition  of  the  body.  An  ex- 
planation which  has  force  only  when  the  spirit  is  an  incubus 
and  not  a  succubus  and  when  the  earthly  psychic  (man 
or  woman)  is  asleep  or  dozing.  But  the  clearest  and  most 
convincing  manifestations  of  the  objectivity  of  the  heavenly 
bridegroom  always  come  when  the  psychic  is  most  clear- 
headed. It  seems,  indeed,  that  it  is  not  even  in  a  trance  but 
only  when  the  psychic  is  wide  awake  that  the  marital  union 
takes  place  objectively.  And  this  I  think  will  be  found 
to  be  the  case  with  the  witches.  When  their  union  with 
the  supposed  Devil  was  based  on  the  faithful  tender  love 
of  one  woman  for  one  man,  and  its  reciprocity,  in  accor- 
dance with  high  moral  standards,  then  was  the  union  ob- 
jective and  natural.  The  gross  rites  of  the  Witches'  Sab- 
baths with  their  abnormalities  and  absurdities,  were  evi- 
dently the  illusion  of  an  insane  imagination  in  great  part 
— although  it  is  also  doubtless  true  that  as  Professor  Wilder 
says,  there  is  little  reason  to  doubt  that  these  "witches' 
sabbaths"  were  formerly  celebrated,  and  that  they  were, 
in  some  modified  form,  a  continuation  of  the  outlawed 
worship  of  the  Roman  Empire. 


HEAVENLY  BRIDEGROOMS. 
By  IDA  C. 

The  Sons  of  God  saw  the  daughters  of  men  that  they  were 
fair;  and  they  took  them  wives  of  all  that  they  chose. 

Genesis  6:2. 
[From  Alienist  &  Neurologist,  August,  1917.] 

Early  in  the  17th  century,  a  light  dawned  upon  the 
horizon  of  these  illusions  and  diableries.  That  light  was  the 
manifesto  of  a  secret  society  of  mystics  called  the  Rosi- 
crucians  or  followers  of  the  Rosie  Cross.  In  1603  the  sect 
became  known;  in  1623  it  placarded  Paris  with  mysterious 
announcements ;  but  it  professed  to  have  existed  long  be- 
fore. Who  its  members  were,  whether  the  society  really 
existed,  or  whether  the  whole  affair  was  a  joke  on  the 
mystics,  are  questions  which  to-day  remain  still  unsettled. 
But,  whether  a  reality  or  a  myth,  the  Rosicrucians  were  a 
factor  in  the  literature  and  mysticism  of  their  time:  and  a 
secret  society  of  the  same  name  still  exists.  They  dealt  a 
powerful  blow  at  the  superstition  which  assumed  the  spiril 
bridegroom  and  the  spirit  bride  to  be  diabolical. 

"They  discarded  forever  all  the  old  tales  of  sorcery 
and  witchcraft  and  communion  with  the  devil.  They  said 
there  were  no  such  horrid,  unnatural  and  disgusting  behij 
as  the  incubi  and  succubi  and  the  innumerable  grotesque 
imps  that  men  had  believed  in  for  so  many  ages.  Man 
was  not  surrounded  with  enemies  like  these,  but  with 
myriads  of  beautiful  and  beneficent  beings,  etc.,  all 
anxious  to  do  him  services.  The  sylphs  of  the  air,  the  un- 
dines of  the  water,  the  gnomes  of  the  Earth,  and  the  sala- 
manders of  the  fire  were  men's  friends,  and  desired  nothing 
so  much  as  that  men  should  purge  themselves  of  all  un- 
cleanness,  and  thus  be  enabled  to  see  and  converse  with 
them.  They  possessed  great  power,  and  were  unrestrained 
by  the  barriers  of  space  or  the  obstructions  of  matter.  But 
man  was  in  one  respect  their  superior.  He  had  an  immortal 
soul,  and  they  had  not.  They  might,  however,  become 
sharers  in  man's  immortality  if  they  could  inspire  one  of 
that  race  with  the  passion  of  love  towards  them.  Hence 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  85 

it  was  the  constant  endeavor  of  the  female  spirits  to  capti- 
vate the  admiration  of  men,  and  of  the  male  gnomes,  sylphs, 
salamanders  and  undines  to  be  beloved  by  a  woman.  The 
object  of  this  passion,  in  returning  their  love,  imparted  a 
portion  of  that  celestial  fire,  the  soul;  and  from  that  time 
forth  the  beloved  became  equals  to  the  lover,  and  both  when 
their  allotted  course  was  run,  entered  together  into  the 
mansions  of  felicity.  These  spirits,  they  said,  watched  .con- 
stantly over  mankind  by  night  and  day.  Dreams,  omens, 
and  presentiments  were  all  their  work,  and  the  means  by 
which  they  gave  warning  of  the  approach  of  danger.  But 
though  so  well  inclined  to  befriend  man  for  their  own  sake, 
the  want  of  a  soul  rendered  them  at  times  capricious  and 
revengeful ;  they  took  offence  at  slight  causes,  and  heaped 
injuries  instead  of  benefits  on  the  heads  of  those  who  ex- 
tinguished the  light  of  reason  that  was  in  them  by  gluttony, 
debauchery,  and  other  appetities  of  the  body."  (Mackay's 
Popular  Delusions,  Mysteries  of  the  Rosie  Cross,  by  A. 
Reader,  Orange  Street,  Red  Lion  Square,  London,  1891.) 
There  is  a  book  called  Sub  Mundanes,  which  in  a  vein 
of  delicate  humor  deals  with  this  belief  of  the  Rosicrucians. 
It  purports  to  be  written  by  an  acquaintance  of  one  Count 
de  Gabulis.  It  was  published  by  the  Abbot  de  Villars 
(nephew  of  Montfaucon),  in  1670.  Sub  Mundanes  refers  to 
stories  told  of  the  Gothic  Kings  being  born  from  a  bear 
and  a  princess  of  Pegusians  being  born  from  a  dog  and  a 
woman ;  of  a  Portuguese  woman,  who  was  exposed  on  a 
deserted  island  having  children  by  a  large  monkey.  The 
author  goes  on  to  say  that  the  sylphs  of  the  Rosicrucians 
seeing  that  they  are  taken  for  Demons  when  they  appear, 
in  order  to  diminish  aversion,  take  the  form  of  these 
animals,  and  accomodate  themselves  thus  to  the  whimsical 
weakness  of  women,  who  would  be  horrified  at  the  sight  of 
a  handsome  sylph,  but  less  so  at  a  dog  or  monkey. 

Sub  Mundanes  tells  a  story  of  a  hard-hearted  Spanish 
beauty  who  repulsed  a  Castillian  gentleman  so  effectually 
that  he  left  her  and  set  off  to  travel  to  forget  her.  A  sylph 
fell  in  love  with  her,  took  the  shape  of  her  absent  lover, 
wooed  her  persistently  and  won  her.  A  son  was  born; 


86  Theodore  Schroeder 

and  when  she  was  again  pregnant,  the  earthly  lover  re- 
turned to  Seville,  quite  cured  of  his  passion,  and  hastened 
to  call  on  her  saying  he  should  now  displease  her  no  longer, 
as  he  had  ceased  to  love  her.  Result:  a  scene,  tears,  re- 
proaches on  the  part  of  the  young  woman — parents  come 
in  and  the  whole  matter  is  brought  to  light.  The  writer 
continues : 

"And  what  part  played  the  Airy-Lover  (interrupted  I) 
all  this  while?  I  see  well  enough  (answered  the  Count) 
that  you  are  displeased  that  he  should  forsake  his  mistress, 
leaving  her  to  the  Rigour  of  the  Parents  and  to  the  Fury 
of  the  Inquisitors.  But  he  had  reason  to  complain  of  her: 
She  was  not  devout  enough  ;  for  when  these  gentlemen 
immortalize  themselves  they  work  seriously,  and  live  very 
holily;  that  they  loose  not  the  Right  which  they  came  to 
acquire  of  Sovereign  good :  So  they  would  have  the  person 
to  whom  they  are  allied,  live  with  exemplary  innocence." 

Sub  Mundanes  also  tells  of  a  young  Lord  of  Bavaria 
who  was  not  to  be  comforted  for  the  death  of  his  wife: 
Whereupon  sylph  took  her  shape.  The  same  story  as 
told  elsewhere,  however,  stated  that  it  was  his  own  wife 
who  returned  from  beyond  the  grave.  They  lived  together 
many  years,  and  had  children.  But  he  "swore,  and  spoke 
lewd  uncivil  words."  She  reproved  him  vainly,  and  at 
last  "she  vanished  one  day  from  him,  and  left  him  nothing 
but  her  Clothes,  and  the  Repentance  of  his  not  having 
followed  her  Holy  Counsels."  Monsieur  Bayle  informs  us 
that  the  "Count  de  Gavalis"  was  published  at  Paris  by  the 
celebrated  Abbott  de  Villars  (nephew  of  De  Montfaucon) 
in  the  year  1670. 

These  two  stories  show  what  stress  is  laid  by  the 
spirit  lover  upon  the  necessity  for  the  earthly  psychic  to 
keep  the  moral  law. 

Another  story,  unreal  and  fantastic  as  is  the  catas- 
trophe, shows  that  bigamy  is  not  condoned  on  the  Bor- 
derland, and  that  no  man  can  serve  two  mistresses  without 
punishment,  when  one  of  the  earthly  partners  of  one  of  these 
nymphs  is  his  Borderland  spouse.  It  appears  that  he  "was 
so  dishonest  a  Man  as  to  fall  in  Love  with  a  Woman;  But 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  87 

as  he  Dined  with  his  new  Mistress  and  certain  of  Us 
Friends,  there  was  seen  in  the  Air  the  Loveliest  Creature 
of  the  World;  which  was  the  invisible  Lover,  that  had  a 
mind  to  let  herself  be  seen  by  the  Friends  of  her  unfaithful 
Gallant;  that  they  might  Judge  how  little  reason  he  could 
have  to  prefer  a  Woman  before  her.  After  which  the  en- 
raged nymph  struck  him  dead  immediately."  (Sub  Mun- 
danes.) 

But  popular  prejudice  regarding  the  reality  of  witch- 
craft died  hard.  The  Rosicrucians  were  charged  with  doing 
as  did  the  witches — projecting  their  astral  forms  for  selfish 
and  lawless  purposes.  It  was  believed  by  the  populace, 
and  by  many  others  whose  education  should  have  taught 
them  better,  that  *  *  *  gentle  maidens,  who  went  to 
bed  alone,  often  awoke  in  the  night  and  found  men  *  *  * 
of  shape  more  beautiful  than  the  Grecian  Apollo,  who  im- 
mediately became  invisible  when  an  alarm  was  raised. 
(Mackay's  En.  Pop.  Delusion.) 

But  this  seems  rather  unlikely,  when  we  carefully 
consider  the  following  pronouciamento  with  which  they 
placarded  Paris.  "We,  the  deputies  of  the  principal  Col- 
lege of  the  brethren  of  the  Rose-cross  have  taken  our  abode, 
visible  and  invisible,  in  this  city  by  the  grace  of  the  Most 
High  towards  whom  are  turned  the  hearts  of  the  just. 
We  shew  and  teach  without  books  or  signs,  and  speak  all 
sorts  of  languages  in  the  countries  where  we  dwell,  to  draw 
mankind,  our  fellows,  from  error  and  from  death." 

"Moreover,  the  Rosicrucians  maintained  most  positively 
that  the  very  first  vow  they  took  was  one  of  chastity,  and 
that  any  of  them  violating  that  oath  would  be  deprived  at 
once  of  all  the  advantages  he  possessed,  and  be  subject  to 
hunger,  thirst,  sorrow,  disease  and  death  like  other  men. 
Witchcraft  and  sorcery  they  also  most  warmly  repudiated." 
(Mysteries  of  the  Rosie  Cross,  by  A.  Reader.) 

And  the  editor  of  Sub  Mundanes,  in  a  footnote,  refers 
to — the  Rosicrucian  marriage  with  the  elementary  or  Spirit- 
life,  esteemed  a  duty  by  the  sages  and  cultivated  with  fast- 
ing, watching,  prayer  and  contemplation  and  acquiring 


88  Theodore  Schroeder 

thereby  that  condition  of  spiritual  repose,  only  in  which 
inspired  visions  occurred. 

Why  did  these  mystics  call  themselves  Rosicrucian? 
Some  writers  have  attempted  to  derive  the  name  from  two 
words  meaning  "dew"  and  "cross" :  but  the  usual  interpreta- 
tion is  "followers  of  the  Rosy  Cross" — a  cross  with  a  rose 
being  used  as  the  society's  symbol.  Some  derive  the  word 
from  the  name,  Christian  Rosenkranz,  the  reputed  founder 
of  the  society:  but  in  view  of  the  fact  that  it  is  uncertain 
that  he  ever  lived,  and  that  the  stories  told  about  the 
opening  of  his  tomb  120  years  after  his  death,  have  a  de- 
cidedly mythical  flavor,  one  may  be  pardoned  for  consider- 
ing this  personage  a  myth,  invented  as  a  convenient  ex- 
planation to  outsiders  to  throw  them  off  the  track  of  the 
real  meaning  of  the  society's  name. 

Now,  the  cross  is  an  old,  old  religious  symbol  of  the 
union  of  man  and  woman  the  world  over,  and  dates  from 
an  unknown  antiquity.  The  rose  is  a  well  known  symbol 
of  love  under  its  most  ardent  form.  We  have  already 
seen  that  the  Mexican  Virgin,  Sochiquetzal,  was  presented 
by  a  heavenly  messenger  with  a  rose  when  the  annuncia- 
tion was  made  that  she  should  bear  a  mysteriously  begot- 
ten son;  that  her  name  means  the  "lifting  up  of  roses": 
and  that  this  event  marks  the  commencement  of  an  epoch 
called  "the  age  of  Roses."  We  have  seen  that  the  Mexican 
Eve  sinned  by  plucking  roses — which  elsewhere  are  called, 
apparently,  "the  fruit  of  the  tree."  We  have  seen  that  quite 
on  the  other  side  of  the  world,  among  the  Mohammedans, 
is  found  a  tradition  that  Christ  was  conceived  by  the  smell- 
ing of  a  rose,  and  there  is  an  Eastern  legend  that  the  burn- 
ing brush  in  which  the  angel  of  the  Lord  appeared  to  Moses 
— a  bush  which  burned  without  being  consumed,  was  a 
rose  bush.  May  not  these  roses  be  symbolically  one  and 
the  same  with  the  rose  upon  the  Rosicrucian  cross?  If  so, 
remembering  the  Rosicrucian  teachings,  about  the  duty  of 
chastity,  the  joy  of  nuptials  with  a  being  from  the  unseen 
world,  and  the  obligation  to  enter  upon  that  heavenly  mar- 
riage with  "fasting,  watching,  prayer,  and  contemplation" 
— we  may  well  believe  that  they  had  learned  the  inner 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  89 

mystery  of  aspiring  through  passion  to  communion  with 
God  and  of  placing  the  rose  of  Divine  Love  upon  the  cross 
of  marriage  union  in  Borderland  wedlock. 

Although  a  book  entitled  "In  the  Pronaos  of  the  temple 
of  Wisdom,"  by  Franz  Hartmann,  occurs  a  list  of  Rosi- 
crucian  symbols  followed  by  the  significant  remark:  "He 
who  can  see  the  meaning  of  all  these  allegories  has  his 
eyes  open." 

Many  of  these  symbols  are  evidently  phallic,  and  yield 
easily  to  the  interpretation  that  they  are  symbols  in  the 
training  of  the  occultist  in  the  three  degrees  to  which  I 
have  already  referred. 

But,  despite  the  good  work  done  by  the  Rosicrucians 
in  lifting  Borderland  wedlock  to  a  higher  plane  in  the  esti- 
mation of  the  public,  it  was  not  all  plain  sailing  yet.  The 
Church — that  conservator  alike  of  the  useful  and  the  use- 
less things  of  the  past — clung  to  the  old  belief  of  witchcraft 
days:  When  one  of  her  mystics — either  nun  or  priest — 
became  thus  espoused,  the  Church  seems  to  have  a  middle 
course  between  the  old  and  the  new.  Usually  she  termed 
such  experiences  "Congressus  cum  daemonius"  and  bent  her 
powers  to  exorcising  the  evil  one.  But  occasionally,  as  in 
the  case  of  St.  Teresa,  the  nun  was  a  clear-headed  woman 
of  known  integrity  and  purity.  "Congressus  cum  daemo- 
nius" was  out  of  the  question  where  such  a  woman  was 
one  of  the  parties  to  the  union  in  these  instances.  By  what 
me  can  only  call  an  inspiration  from  on  high,  the  Church 
promptly  decided  that  the  congressus  was  diabolical,  but 
leaven  sent.  And,  since  the  nun  was  the  professed  "bride 
of  Christ"  what  more  natural  than  that  her  experience 
should  be  viewed  as  a  mystical  union  with  this  Divine 
Bridegroom?  In  this,  the  Church  acted  according  to  her 
light,  and  I  think  it  must  be  admitted  she  did  fairly  well, 
considering  the  ignorance  and  prejudice  of  the  times. 

Latin  scholars  will  notice  that  the  laws  of  Latin  syntax 
require  a  word  to  J>e  supplied  in  translating  this  phrase — 
a  general  term,  such  as  the  word  "something,"  or  "that 
which  belongs  to."  As  this  grammatical  construction  was 
used  by  a  very  learned  Catholic  priest  when  discussing  the 


90  Theodore  Schroeder 

matter  with  me,  I  cannot  suppose  it  to  be  a  slip  of  the 
tongue,  as  I  should  have  supposed,  had  the  speaker  been 
less  of  a  scholar.  This  construction,  however,  instead  of 
obscuring  really  sets  forth  the  matter  with  clearer  resemb- 
lance to  the  psychic's  useful  physiological  experience,  as 
will  be  seen  by  comparing  it  with  the  legends  I  have  re- 
ferred to  regarding  the  finding  of  the  body  of  Osiris  by  Isis. 
Only  by  comparing  this  Latin  expression  with  the  legends 
and  their  application,  will  the  phrase  be  properly  under- 
stood. 

It  is  noteworthy,  however,  that  in  St.  Teresa's  case, 
her  confessor  after  having  her  write  out  a  detailed  account 
of  her  experience,  ordered  her  to  burn  a  great  part  of  it. 
Was  it  because  the  objectivity  of  her  experiences  did  not 
harmonize  very  well  with  the  mystical  idea  of  "espousal  to 
Christ"? 

Where  the  earthly  partner  in  these  unions  was  a 
woman,  and  a  nun  at  that,  pledged  to  unfaltering  obedience 
to  her  official  superiors,  it  was  probably  an  easy  matter 
for  her  confessor  to  lump  all  her  experiences — veridical  as 
well  as  illusory — under  one  heading,  that  of  subjective.  A 
virgin  is  usually  by  reason  of  her  environment  as  a  woman, 
so  ignorant  of  the  physiology  of  marriage  that  it  is  diffi- 
cult for  her  as  a  psychic  to  distinguish  what  is  real  from 
what  is  unreal  until  she  has  been  a  Borderland  wife  for 
sometime.  But  for  the  priest  to  whom  the  blessed  experi- 
ence of  Borderland  wedlock  came  in  all  its  fullness,  a  dif- 
ferent course  of  treatment  must  have  been  necessary,  since 
being  a  man,  with  the  opportunities  of  knowledge  open  to 
a  man,  and  to  a  priestly  confessor  of  sinful  men  and  women, 
he  could  not  be  hoodwinked  by  his  superior  into  taking  for 
subjective  illusions  these  experiences  which  were  distinctly 
objective.  The  records  of  witchcraft  contain  accounts  of 
priests  who  were  burned  at  the  stake  for  a  union  of  thii 
sort  extending  over  forty  or  fifty  years,  with  a  spirit  as- 
sumed to  be  the  Devil  in  the  form  of  a  woman. 

Pope  Gregory  is  known  as  Hildebrand,  that  pope  who 
strove  so  persistently  to  purge  the  priesthood  of  simony 
and  unchastity  and  to  emancipate  the  Church  from  inter- 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  91 

ference  by  the  temporal  power.  But  what  is  done  with 
priest  nowadays  who  enter  upon  Borderland  wedlock,  is 
not,  so  far  as  I  can  learn,  revealed  to  the  general  public. 
From  a  French  physician,  however,  I  learn  of  a  custom 
among  the  Continental  priests  concerning  their  sleeping  ar- 
rangements which  suggest  that  more  allowance  is  made 
nowadays  than  formerly  for  those  who  Heaven  has  thus 
singled  out,  and  that  the  Church  bows  to  the  will  of  Heaven 
in  this  matter,  and  lays  no  blame  upon  the  priest. 

Theophile  Gautier  has  written  a  novelette  called  Clari- 
monde,  which  recounts  the  love  of  a  beautiful  vampire  for 
a  priest.  She  comes  to  him  each  night  and  they  mount  a 
horse  and  gallop  away  to  her  palace,  when  he  returns  at 
daybreak  for  his  priesthood  duties.  The  author  represents 
the  priest  as  struggling  between  his  duties  as  a  priest  and 
what  he  considers  the  allurements  of  sin:  and  in  consonance 
with  the  idea,  that  punishment  is  visited  upon  the  sinner. 
Gautier  reveals  her  as  a  vampire  sucking  the  blood  of  her 
lover  while  he  sleeps. 

It  would  seem  as  though  the  author,  especially  for  a 
priest  of  God,  were  catering  to  the  popular  superstition 
that  it  is  sinful  to  enjoy  sensuous  love.  But  if  any  one  in 
the  world  is  entitled  to  the  joys  of  true  Borderland  wedlock, 
it  is  surely  a  priest  who  has  kept  his  vows  of  asceticism, 
and  who  is  really  pure-minded.  If  any  one  in  the  world 
needs  it,  it  is  surely  the  priest  who  is  supposed  to  stand 
midway  as  a  bridge-builder,  between  earthly  sinners  and 
celestial  beings  of  the  unseen  world  beyond  the  grave,  since 
it  is  pretty  generally  acknowledged  that  well  ordered  sex 
life  is  necesary  to  the  development  of  a  symmetrical  char- 
acter. For  what  mean  the  words  "holy"  and  "holiness"? 
They  mean  "whole-ly,"  "wholeness."  The  man  and  woman 
who  expects  to  be  indeed  "holy,"  must  be  "whole,"  i.  e., 
symmetrical.  In  old  Testament  times,  Jehovah  forbade  any 
priest  who  was  a  eunuch  to  minister  before  Him,  thus 
recognizing  the  importance  of  sex  in  the  perfect  man.  The 
Rev.  Arthur  Devine,  Passionist,  in  a  book  entitled:  "Con- 
vent Life,  or  the  Duties  of  Sisters  Dedicated  in  Religion  to 
the  Service  of  God" — a  book  which  the  title  page  shows  is 


92  Theodore  Schroeder 

"intended  chiefly  for  superiors  and  confessors,"  takes  up 
the  subject  of  nuns  who  are  subject  to  visions  and  super- 
natural revelations.  Considering  the  question  as  to  whether 
such  experiences  are  true  visions  or  the  results  of  deception 
and  error,  he  mentions  as  one  test  the  consideration  of 
"Whether  it  [the  revelation]  contains  anything  false,  be- 
cause in  this  case  it  cannot  proceed  from  the  spirit  of  truth : 
Therefore,  it  is  necessary  to  consider  whether  it  is  con- 
formable to  Scripture,  to  faith  and  morals,  to  theology  and 
to  the  doctrine  and  traditions  of  the  church.  *  *  * 

"Are  they  [these  communications]  accompanied  by 
the  cross  and  by  mortification,  and  do  they  tend  to  the 
manifestation  of  the  faith  and  the  utility  of  the  Church? 
From  which  it  will  be  seen  that  a  heavenly  bridegroom 
who  is  not  a  good  Catholic  has  every  prospect  of  being 
classed  as  demoniacal,  if  he  happens  to  have  the  same  re- 
ligious belief  as  herself  [she  being  heretical].  This  is  a 
case  where  religious  prejudice  furnishes  the  standard  by 
which  to  test  the  communication,  and  it  will  be  remembered 
that  to  start  with,  for,  upon  any  subject  when  dealing  with 
occult  phenomena  is  certain  to  bring  about  occurrences  of 
a  fantastic  misleading  or  diabolical  character. 

The  spiritus  percutiens,  "rapping  spirit"  (?)  conjured 
away  by  old  Catholic  formulae  at  the  benediction  of 
churches,  was  brought  forward  by  some  of  M.  de  Gas- 
parin's  critics.  As  his  tables  did  not  rap,  he  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  spiritus  percutiens  who  proves,  however, 
that,  the  church  was  acquainted  with  raps,  and  explained 
them  by  the  spiritualistic  hypothesis. 

A  learned  priest  has  kindly  looked  for  the  alleged  spiritus 
percutiens  in  dedicatory  and  other  ecclesiastical  formu- 
lae. He  only  finds  it  in  benedictions  of  bridal  chambers, 
and  thinks  it  refers  to  the  slaying  spirit  in  the  Book  of 
Tobit.  Andrew  Lange,  Cock  Lane  and  Common  Sense, 
pp.  316-317. 

The  "slaying  spirit"  in  the  Book  of  Tobit,  it  will  be 
remembered,  was  a  so-called  evil  spirit  who  was  in  love 
with  Sara  and  who  objected  to  her  marrying,  and  who  slew 
seven  successively  earthly  aspirants  to  her  hand,  on  their 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  93 

bridal  night.  He  is  always  referred  to  as  an  instance  of 
the  incubus.  But  let  us  not  forget  that  so-called  incubi 
are  angels,  and  are  never  evil;  since  in  order  to  hold  com- 
munication with  the  beloved  earthly  person  they  as  well 
as  the  psychic  are  obliged  to  live  correctly  and  think  clearly. 
And  what  is  evil  on  the  Borderland  is  all  subjective  and 
never  objective.  And  the  number  seven  too  in  regards  to 
the  husbands  of  a  virgin  who  already  has  a  spouse  has  a 
suspiciously  mythical,  folklorish  look. 

That  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  should  take  account 
of  such  a  spirit  in  the  benedictions  of  bridal  chambers 
shows  that  it  has  had  good  reason  to  suspect  the  visits 
of  incubi  to  the  virgins  of  its  laity,  as  well  as  to  the  virgins 
of  its  nunneries.  Indeed,  Tylor  in  his  Primitive  Culture 
tells  us  that  the  frequency  of  incubi  and  succubae  "is  set 
forth  in  the  Bull  of  Pope  Innocent  VIII.  in  1484,  as  an  ac- 
cepted accusation  against  "many  persons  of  both  sexes, 
forgetful  of  their  own  salvation,  and  falling  away  from  the 
Catholic  faith." 

The  following,  which  I  take  from  Sub  Mundanes,  re- 
fers to  one  of  the  most  noted  instances  in  convent  life  of 
an  incubus  who  was  objectively  as  well  as  subjectively  the 
spouse  of  a  nun.  "A  little  Gnome  got  into  the  affections 
of  the  Famous  Magdalen  of  the  Cross,  Abbess  of  a  Monas- 
tery at  Cordova  in  Spain;  she  made  him  Happy,  when 
she  was  but  twelve  years  old;  and  they  continued  their 
Amours  Libres  for  the  space  of  thirty  years;  until  an  igno- 
rant Director  persuaded  Magdalen  that  her  lover  was  a 
Fiend;  and  forced  her  to  demand  absolution  of  Pope  Paul 
the  Third.  Yet  it  is  impossible  that  this  could  be  a  Demon; 
for  all  Europe  knew,  and  Cassidorus  Reniris  has  made  known 
to  all  Posterity,  the  great  miracles  which  daily  were 
wrought  in  Favor  of  this  Holy  Woman;  which  certainly 
had  never  come  to  pass,  if  her  Amours  Libres  with  the 
Gnome  had  fallen  so  Diabolick,  as  the  Venerable  Director 
imagined." 

Another  account,  however,  informs  us  that  the  abbess 
was  accused  by  her  nuns  of  magic — "a  very  convenient  ac- 
cusation in  those  days  when  a  superior  was  at  all  trouble- 


94  Theodore  Schroeder 

some" — and  that  she  very  cleverly  anticipated  them  by  go- 
ing to  the  Pope  to  confess  all  and  throw  herself  on  his 
mercy.  Inasmuch  as  he  granted  her  absolution,  one  cannot 
help  wondering  if  he  did  not  read  between  the  lines  of  this 
confession  the  occult  truth  and  recognize  her  as  a  lawful 
Borderland  spouse.  Most  of  the  accounts  state  that  Mag- 
dalen's lover  was  the  Devil,  who  appeared  to  her  as  a  black 
man.  Here  we  come  upon  the  same  root  idea,  doubtless, 
as  that  behind  the  black  Madonnas,  the  black  Krishna  and 
the  black  Quetzalcoot  of  Mexico,  a  symbolism  due  perhaps 
in  part  to  the  darkness  of  the  unknown  world  whence  they 
emerge,  and  in  part  to  their  folklore  and  occult  aspect 
as  deities  of  night-time  and  Borderland  nuptials.  "I  am 
black,  but  comely,"  says  one  of  the  lovers  in  that  mystical 
and  passionate  Song  of  Solomon. 

I  have  already  referred  to  the  Song  of  Solomon  as 
being  interpreted  by  Christian  comment  and  said  to  be  a 
poetical  statement  of  the  rapturous  union  between  Christ  and 
his  Bride,  the  Church.  A  side  light  is  thrown  upon  the  inter- 
pretation by  a  note  in  Kitto's  illustrated  Bible,  which  quotes 
Lane  (Modern  Egyptians)  as  saying  that  the  odes  sung 
by  Mohammedans  at  religious  festivals  were  of  a  similar 
nature  with  the  Song  of  Solomon,  generally  alluding  to  the 
Prophet  as  the  object  of  love  and  praise.  In  the  small 
collection  of  poems  sung  at  Zikirs  it  appears  is  one  ending 
with  these  lines : 

"The  phantom  of  thy  form  visited  me  in  my  slumber ; 
I  said:  'O  phantom  of  slumber!  who  sent  thee?' 
He  said :   'He  sent  me  whom  thou  Knowest : 
He  whose  love  occupies  thee.' 

The  beloved  of  my  heart  visited  me  in  the  darkness  of  night. 
I  stood  to  show  him  honor,  until  he  sat  down, 
I  said,  'O  thou  my  petition  and  all  my  desire ! 
Hast  thou  come  at  midnight,  and  not  feared  the  watchman?' 
He  said  to  me,  'I  feared :  but,  however,  love 
Had  taken  from  me  my  soul  and  my  breath.' " 

"Finding  that  songs  of  this  description  are  exceedingly 
numerous,  and  almost  the  only  poems  sung  at  Zikirs;  that 
they  are  composed  for  that  purpose  and  intended  only  to 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  95 

have  a  spiritual  sense  (though  certainly  not  understood 
in  that  sense  by  the  generality  of  the  vulgar)  :  I  cannot  enter- 
tain any  doubt  as  to  the  design  of  Solomon's  Song." 

This  religious  mysticism  finds  a  modern  echo  in  a 
little  publication  recently  issued  by  the  Adi  Brahma  Samaj 
of  Calcutta,  as  the  first  step  in  a  new  propaganda.  It  is 
entitled  "The  Religion  of  Love!'  In  its  pages  occur  these 
words : 

"Though  these  terms,  Father,  Mother,  Friend,  Hus- 
band of  the  soul,  all  allegorical,  they  very  aptly  express 
our  sweet  relationship  with  God,  and  we  have  every  right 
to  use  them.  Among  these  allegorical  designations  the 
Husband  of  the  Soul  is  the  best." 

Zanchius  wrote  an  "Excellent  Traite  du  Mariage  Spiri- 
tual Entre  Jesus  Christ  et  son  E'glise,"  in  which  he  drew 
a  close  parallel  between  earthly  wedlock  and  the  spiritual 
and  divine  marriage  of  Christ  with  the  Church  Universal. 
Among  other  things  he  laid  stress  on  that  Scriptural  saying 
of  earthly  husband  and  wife,  that  the  twain  shall  become 
one  flesh;  and  he  said  that,  according  to  Scripture,  it  was 
neither  God  the  Father  nor  God  the  Spirit  who  is  Sponsor 
of  his  Church,  but  the  Son,  who  was  made  of  like  nature 
with  ourselves — like  in  all  things  to  us,  but  without  sin. 
He  added: 

"His  soul  does  not  pervade  all  space,  because  it  went 
out  of  his  body  when  he  died  and  consequently  was  not 
in  all  places,  since  going  out  of  the  body,  it  did  not  remain 
therein,  afterwards  being  returned  to  the  body  [and]  never 
was  and  never  will  be  (any  more  than  the  body)  in  all 
places.  *  *  * 

"In  this  spiritual  marriage,  all  the  person  of  each  faith- 
ful one — that  is  to  say,  the  body  and  the  soul — is  conjoined 
with  all  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  is  made  one  flesh 
and  one  person  with  him." 

As  to  the  method  by  which  this  combined  fleshly  and 
spiritual  union  of  the  Christian  with  Christ  can  take  place 
Zanchius  seemed  to  think  that  the  Eucharist  in  which  one 
partakes  of  the  body  and  blood  of  Christ,  is  the  sole  ap- 
pointed means. 


96  Theodore  Schroeder 

Now  the  Eucharist,  or  the  use  of  bread  and  wine  in 
a  sacred  rite,  was  an  old  Pagan  custom  bound  up  with  the 
idea  of  entering  into  blood  brotherhood  of  which  Jesus 
made  use  to  emphasize  his  own  brotherhood  with  his  dis1- 
ciples.  The  ceremony  of  the  Eucharist  was  found  in  Peru 
and  when  Jesuits  first  landed.  In  fact,  it  is  a  very,  very 
ancient  rite  existing  in  widely  separated  countries.  The 
Christian  writer,  Arnobius  rebukes  in  cutting  terms  the 
Pagan  mock  modesty  which  blushed  at  the  mere  mention 
of  "bread  and  wine" — a  matter  which  indicates  some  folk- 
lore connection  between  the  Eucharist  and  sex:  and  if  so, 
then  between  the  Eucharist  and  the  ancient  mysteries  of 
Phallicism.  Inasmuch  as  by  far  the  greater  part  of  all  that 
was  pure  and  holy  in  Phallicism  is  bound  up  with  Border- 
land wedlock,  it  is  possible  that  the  Eucharist  may  have 
esoterically  a  wider  significance  than  either  Arbnobius  or 
Zanchius  was  aware. 

Modern  believers  in  the  union  with  Christ  have  taken 
a  less  mystical  and  more  practical  view  of  it,  than  did  Zan- 
chius. Mrs.  M.  Baxter  of  the  well  known  institution  for 
Divine  Healing,  Bethlehem,  London,  issued  a  little  pam- 
phlet on  that  text  of  1st  Corinthians  VI.  13.,  "The  body 
*  *  *  for  the  Lord,  and  the  Lord  for  the  body."  In  it, 
she  says: 

"One  of  the  most  successful  devices  of  Satan  has  been 
his  attempt  to  divorce  our  bodies  from  our  souls  in  their 
relation  to  God.  'Your  soul  is  the  Lord's  of  course,  but 
your  body  is  your  own.  You  must  serve  the  Lord  with 
your  soul,  but  /enjoy  yourself  with  your  body.'  Such  is 
his  counsel  to  those  whose  tendency  is  gross  and  carnal, 
such  as  easily  become  drunkards,  fornicators,  or  prosti- 
tutes, and  form  the  large  class  of  fallen  men  and  fallen 
women  in  our  midst.  To  another  class  he  comes  and  says, 
'You  are  religious;  but  it  is  your  soul  with  which 
you  can  serve  God;  all  you  can  do  with  your  body  is  to 
punish  it,  and  destroy  it  by  slow  degrees/  Many  look 
upon  this  as  religious  heroism;  but  it  is  as  much  a  lie  to 
the  truth  of  God,  as  is  the  grosser  misuse  of  the  body  for 
lust  or  appetite.  God  comes  with  his  glorious  claim.  "The 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  97 

body  is  for  the  Lord  and  the  Lord  for  the  body.' "  (Mrs. 
M.  Baxter.) 

Under  the  Divine  Touch,  a  pamphlet  written  by  Ches- 
ter E.  Pond,  of  Philadelphia,  contains  the  following  recorded 
experiences,  which,  mystical  as  they  may  be  considered 
from  one  standpoint,  are  singularly  suggestive  of  the  earlier 
experiences  of  the  psychic  who  has  entered  on  Borderland 
wedlock,  but  who  has  not  yet  learned  to  distinguish  be- 
tween subjective  and  objective  touches — that  is,  between 
a  touch  which  is  material,  tangible,  real,  and  one  that  is 
only  an  hypnotic  suggestion  made  by  the  Borderland 
spouse. 

"For  the  last  eleven  months  my  whole  being  has  been 
open  more  or  less  to  the  joys,  delights  and  peculiar  sensa- 
tions of  heaven.  Recently  the  Lord  has  been  giving  me 
his  choicest  foretastes  of  heavenly  blessedness  just  before 
I  arise  in  the  morning.  During  these  eleven  months  I  have 
been  daily  and  almost  hourly  conscious  of  His  positive  and 
holy  touch  in  some  part  of  my  natural  body.  But  during 
these  recent  morning  experiences  His  touch  has  been  more 
sweet  and  more  powerful  than  usual.  These  heavenly  ex- 
periences when  viewed  from  a  human  standpoint  seem  re- 
markable. But  when  viewed  from  a  heavenly  standpoint 
they  seem  perfectly  natural.  They  have  come  to  me  very 
gradually.  In  every  way  they  have  been  orderly  and  help- 
ful. They  seem  just  what  might  be  expected  to  come  to 
any  devout  Christian.  For  the  Lord  is  no  respecter  of 
persons.  In  considering  these  experiences  it  should  be 
borne  in  mind  that  Jehovah  Jesus  is  in  every  way  infinite, 
that  He  never  makes  two  things  just  alike  in  the  natural 
world,  and  that  He  never  acts  twice  alike  in  the  spiritual 
world.  Hence,  as  might  be  expected,  He  touches  my  'natu- 
ral body'  through  my  'spiritual  body'  in  an  infinite  variety 
of  ways,  and  with  infinite  sweetness.  But  for  convenience 
I  will  classify,  and  say  that  He  touches  me,  first  directly  or 
immediately ;  secondly,  He  touches  me  through  the  medium 
or  ministration  of  angels ;  and,  thirdly,  through  the  medium 
of  His  Written  Word.  *  *  * 

"To  my  distinct  consciousness  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  is 


98  Theodore  Schroeder 

that  living  divine,  or  divine  substance  which  constantly 
proceeds  from  His  divine  person,  somewhat  in  the  same 
way  and  manner  that  rays  of  light  and  heat  are  continually 
proceeding  from  our  natural  sun.  It  is  written  that  'God 
is  love/  and  that  'God  is  light/  or  truth.  From  this  we  learn 
that  love  and  truth  constitute  the  divine  essence.  And 
in  the  ordinary  use  of  language  heat  corresponds  to  love 
and  light  to  truth.  We  call  a  loving  person  warm-hearted 
and  an  educated  person  enlighted.  Jesus  Himself  taught 
spiritual  truths  by  natural  symbols.  *  *  * 

"The  Lord,  in  His  mercy,  tempers  the  inflowing  of 
His  spirit  to  our  different  states  of  receptivity.  *  *  * 
If  He  had  poured  His  divine  love  and  truth  into  my  soul 
and  body  one  year  ago,  with  the  same  degree  of  heat  and 
power  that  He  does  now,  I  believe  I  should  have  been  con- 
sumed. 

"My  experiences  are  endless  in  variety.  At  times, 
when  love  seems  to  predominate  over  truth,  the  divine 
proceeding  that  streams  forth  upon  me  appears  to  my 
spiritual  vision  like  the  golden  beams  of  an  autumn  sunset, 
but  when  truth  predominates  over  love,  they  appear  like 
streams  of  white  light  reflected  from  burnished  silver. 

"At  times  I  am  consciously  alone  with  the  Lord.  At 
other  times  I  am  consciously  in  the  presence  of  angels. 
Since  these  touches  of  the  Lord  are  infinite  in  variety,  I 
can  never  tell  one  minute  what  will  occur  the  next.  As  I 
now  sit  writing  I  am  so  literally  full  that  every  particle 
of  flesh  in  my  body  feels  as  if  it  were  alive  and  moving. 
This  extreme  fullness  in  the  day  time  does  not  occur  every 
day.  It  will  probably  not  continue  more  than  eight  or  ten 
hours.  While  I  am  busy  it  is  not  excessively  delightful. 
But  if  I  were  to  lean  back  in  my  chair,  or  to  go  and  lie 
down,  I  should  soon  be  completely  deluged  with  floods  of 
heavenly  glory,  and  be  'lost  in  wonder,  love  and  praise.' 
The  movings  of  the  spirit  are  usually  undulatory.  When 
I  am  still,  and  sometimes  when  at  work,  they  come  like 
waves  of  liquid  sweetness,  and  roll  over  me  and  through 
me  in  every  conceivable  direction,  and  with  all  conceivable 
variety. 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  99 

"Occasionally  at  night  the  Lord  touches  me  all  over 
alike  for  a  few  seconds.  At  such  times  I  seem  to  be  literally 
resting  in  and  on  the  Divine.  Sometimes  He  touches  only 
a  few  fibres  in  some  very  small  muscle,  and  through  these 
He  fills  and  thrills  my  whole  being  with  unutterable  divine 
glory.  At  times  His  holy  touch  is  very  delicate,  tender 
and  meltingly  sweet.  At  other  times  He  touches  me  with 
a  power  that  moves  the  very  foundations  of  my  being,  and 
that  seems  almost  startling.  Sometimes  He  moves  very 
slowly,  at  other  times  so  rapidly  that  it  seems  as  if  the  next 
wave  of  glory  would  loosen  my  'spiritual  body'  from  its 
present  moorings  in  the  'natural  body.'  A  few  mornings 
ago  while  lying  in  bed  under  a  divine  influx  that  filled 
me  with  divine  love  and  sweetness  to  the  very  utmost 
extent  of  my  present  capacity.  I  could  but  exclaim,  'O 
Jesus,  my  dear  heavenly  Father!  Thou  alone  art  infinitely 
wise  and  infinitely  holy!  In  Thy  presence  I  am  nothing, 
I  am  nothing!  Before  Thee  I  know  nothing,  I  know 
nothing!  These  sweet  touches  of  Thy  spirit,  these  in- 
describable sensations,  these  angelic  delights,  these  inef- 
fable thrills  of  divine  glory  I  cannot  understand!  I  can 
now  understand  them  no  better  than  if  I  were  a  new  born 
infant  lying  at  Thy  feet!  Such  knowledge  is  too  wonderful 
for  me;  it  is  high,  I  cannot  attain  unto  it!  Dear  heavenly 
Father,  I  can  no  more  understand  how  each  divine  touch 
can  fill  me  with  such  holy  sweetness  and  with  such  trans- 
ports of  joy,  than  I  can  understand  how  Thou  canst  create 
a  world !  O  Thou  eternal  Word,  by  whom  the  worlds  were 
framed !  I  can  no  more  comprehend  Thy  present  movings 
within  my  own  little  body,  than  I  could  have  compre- 
hended the  ancient  movings  of  Thy  spirit  upon  the  face  of 
the  great  deep  if  I  had  been  present  when  Thou  didst  say, 
'Let  there  be  light,  and  there  was  light/  *  *  * 

"Through  the  loving  touch  and  conscious  presence  of 
an  angel,  be  it  a  man  or  a  woman,  the  Lord  can  fill  me  with 
celestial  delights  and  sensations  that  are  similar  and  almost 
equal  to  those  produced  by  the  direct  inflowing  of  His 
own  holy  spirit.  The  difference  between  the  two  is  easily 
discernible,  but  not  easily  described.  Both  are  immeasur- 


100  Theodore  Schroeder 

ably  superior  to  any  soul  or  bodily  delight  we  ever  experi- 
ence in  the  ordinary  planes  of  Christian  life.  As  near  as  I 
can  describe  it  the  difference  between  the  two  is  this:  When 
waves  of  glory  are  produced  by  the  direct  touch  of  the 
Divine  Spirit  they  seem  to  have,  as  it  were,  a  golden  tinge, 
a  delicate  crest  of  holy  sweetness,  which  does  not  accom- 
pany those  produced  through  the  touch  of  an  angel.  *  *  * 

"The  angels  are  so  thoroughly  honest,  so  perfectly  free 
from  all  false  modesty  and  pretended  humility,  and  are 
so  free  from  all  formality  and  human  ceremonies,  that 
the  presence  of  an  angel  is  always  elevating  and  refresh- 
ing. *  *  * 

"The  Lord  touches  me  consciously  now  through  the 
medium  of  His  Written  Word.  *  *  * 

"When  I  read  the  Scriptures  my  whole  'spiritual  body' 
can  feel  the  touch  and  power  of  the  Living  Divine  that 
flows  through  its  words  and  sentences,  just  as  plainly  and 
unmistakably  as  my  natural  body  can  feel  the  touch  and 
force  of  the  wind.  And  at  time^  the  'Spirit  of  Truth'  flows 
all  through  me,  and  all  over  me,  so  forcibly  that  I  feel  as 
if  I  were  literally  'in  the  Truth/  At  these  times  the 
Eternal  Word  shines  through  the  Written  Word  with  such 
illuminating  power  that  various  human  theories  and  specu- 
lations are  scattered  to  the  four  winds.  And  under  such 
illumination  'it  is  given  to  know  the  mysteries  of  the  King- 
dom of  God.'  *  *  *  I  can  learn  more  in  one  hour  under 
such  practical  tuition,  than  I  ever  have  learned  in  a  whole 
year  at  Yale  Theological  Seminary.  In  religion  theories 
have  their  uses,  but  the  school  of  experience  is  the  only 
school  that  can  be  relied  upon  for  instruction  in  the  myste- 
ries and  deep  things  of  God.  It  often  seems  to  me  as  if  the 
Christian  world,  ministers  included,  were  looking  more  to 
their  creeds,  and  to  one  another,  for  their  theology,  than 
to  the  Word  and  the  Spirit.  *  *  * 

"Before  any  one  can  become  personally  acquainted 
with  the  Lord,  and  with  the  true  meaning  of  His  written 
Word,  he  must  necessarily  forsake  every  known  sin  and 
he  must  know  what  it  means  to  live  up  to  every  known 
requirement  and  privilege  of  the  Gospel.  He  must  also 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  101 

ask  for  and  receive  a  tender  conscience,  an  enlightened 
reason,  and  a  sanctified  common  sense.  Then  he  will  no 
longer  be  afraid  to  use  his  own  reason  and  his  own  good 
sense.  I  have  recently  received  from  the  Lord  as  I  believe 
the  following  unsectarian  motto: 

"  'Love  everybody,  learn  of  everybody,  and  follow  nobody 
but  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ! 

"To  obtain  and  retain  constant  Divine  guidance  and 
tuition  I  find  that  my  higher  nature  must  bear  complete 
and  easy  sway  over  my  lower  nature;  that  the  'old  man' 
must  be  wholly  put  off  and  the  new  man  wholly  'put  on'; 
that  the  affections  and  thoughts  of  my  'upward  man'  must 
have  easy  and  complete  control  over  every  appetite,  passion, 
and  desire  of  my  'outward  man' ;  and  that  I  must  keep 
myself  so  full  of  the  Lord,  that  I  can  live  '  a  heavenly  life 
upon  earth,'  in  all  places  and  under  all  conceivable  circum- 
stances, just  as  easily  and  naturally  as  I  can  breathe  the 
sweet  air  of  heaven.  *  *  * 

"This  loving  and  indescribable  union  with  God,  is  no 
longer  a  mere  matter  of  faith  with  me,  but  it  is  a  matter 
of  actual  knowledge  and  sweet  experience.  *  *  * 

"While  enjoying  these  heavenly  experiences  the  Lord 
has  given  me  better  health  than  during  any  eleven  months 
for  the  last  twenty  years.  And  he  has  dealt  more  tenderly 
with  me  than  any  human  mother  ever  dealt  with  a  helpless 
infant.  *  *  * 

"I  sincerely  hope  that  the  love  and  goodness  of  the 
Lord,  so  bountifully  manfested  in  giving  me  such  large 
foretastes  of  heaven  while  yet  in  the  body,  will  prove  help- 
ful and  encouraging  to  every  honest-hearted  reader.  But 
since  the  ways  of  the  Lord  are  infinite  in  variety  let  no  one 
look  for  an  experience  precisely  like  mine.  I  have  prayed 
for  years  that  the  Lord  would  make  me  just  as  pure,  just 
as  holy  and  just  as  useful  as  lay  within  the  scope  of  human 
and  Divine  possibilities.  He  is  now  taking  His  own  way 
to  answer  my  prayers."  (Under  the  Divine  Touch,  by 
Chester  E.  Pond,  1432  Chestnut  St.,  Philadelphia.  Pa.  First 
published  in  the  Mount  Joy  Herald,  Mt.  Joy,  Pa.,  under 
dates  of  April  8th  and  15th,  1882.) 


102 


Theodore  Schroeder 


In  the  following  experience,  it  will  be  seen  that  this 
so-called  Divine  touch,  reveal  itself  as  that  of  a  Border- 
land bridegroom.  It  is  taken  from  a  letter  written  by  a 
lady,  a  devout  and  pure-minded  Christian,  as  will  be  noticed. 
Her  experiences  occurred  at  a  well  known  summer  resort 
in  the  United  States  where  a  cottage  for  divine  healing 
had  been  established.  But  as  the  letter  was  shown  to  me 
by  a  third  party,  I  do  not  feel  at  liberty  to  mention  the 
town,  lest  some  clue  be  given  to  the  writer's  personality. 
Indeed,  it  was  only  upon  this  condition  that  the  person  who 
showed  me  this  letter  allowed  me  to  make  use  of  it  here- 
with: 
"Dear  Sister: 

"Since  learning  from  Miss    that    you    know    the 

experience   which   is   mine,   I  have   thought    I   should  write 
you. 

"At  first,  as  the  newly  married  Bride,  I  shrank  from 
exposing  the  secrets  of  my  Love.  They  were  sacred  be- 
tween my  Beloved  and  myself.  Now,  it  has  shown  me 
that  this  wondrous  truth,  as  well  as  all  other  truth,  must 
be  acknowledged,  and  that  a  most  glorious  part  of  my  high 
calling  is  to  co-operate  with  Him  in  calling  his  Bride  unto 
Himself.  *  *  * 

"For  myself,  I  had  not  time  to  question;  the  truth  was 
sprung  upon  me  unexpectedly,  and  I  just  went  under.  The 
fears  and  questionings  came  afterwards;  but  blessed  be  my 
God !  He  did  not  let  me  parley  long  with  the  foe,  but  Him- 
self strengthened  me  to  shake  off  his  power,  and,  coming 
fully  under  the  shelter  of  His  love,  press  on — until  He  has 
fully  established  me,  and  I  impelled  by  His  mighty  Spirit 
within  me,  reach  eagerly  forward  to  the  glorious  un  foldings 
of  His  love  and  power  that  lie  beyond.  *  *  * 

"Suffice  it  to  say,  I  am  in  great  and  abundant  fullness 
and  blessing,  alike  in  my  physical  and  in  my  spiritual 
nature,  and  that  His  own  abounding  life  flows  in  power 
through  my  whole  being.  *  *  * 

"I  would  have  *  *  *  fully  understand  that  this 
is  the  fulfillment  of  the  marriage  relation  between  Christ 
and  the  body — that  as  he  has  been  recognized  in  the  soul 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  103 

as  Lord  over  it,  and  also  over  the  other  parts  and  organs 
of  the  body,  so  now  must  He  be  recognized  and  accepted 
in  the  organs  of  generation  as  Lord  over  them;  and  His 
life  must  be  allowed  to  come  in,  where,  through  fear  of 
evil,  the  emotions  of  life  have  heretofore  been  suppressed. 
Satan  is  bound  to  beset  the  soul  with  fears,  it  may  be  the 
most  terrible,  and  to  whisper,  perhaps,  dreadful  things. 
The  only  way  is  to  remember  the  faithfulness  of  Him  who 
has  led  us  these  many  years — never  betraying  our  con- 
fidence. Standing  upon  the  written  word,  and  casting 
ourselves  in  complete  abandonment  upon  Him,  let  Him 
have  His  way  in  every  part.  The  life  abundant  must  flow 
into  every  part  of  His  purchased  possession,  ere  we  are 
•fully  redeemed. 

"Inasmuch  as  we  withhold  from  Him  one  part  or  organ, 
we  are  robbing  God  of  just  this  much.  God  has  given  us 
no  idle  words  in  his  written  Word;  EVERY  PROMISE 
is  to  be  realized  by  us,  as  we  follow  on,  and  enter  into  the 
experience  portrayed  in  each  particular  position  of  the 
word.  *  *  * 

"The  Body,  the  Temple  of  God.  I  These.  IV.  3,  4; 
I.  Cor.  III.  16-19;' 

"  The  Living  Sacrifice.  Rom.  VI,  II,  12,  13;  VIII. 
10-13;  Rom.  XII.  I;' 

"The  Bride  and  Husband.'  Isaiah  XXVI.  9;  LIV.  5; 
Cant.  III.  I.;  Eph.  V.  29-32;  22,  23?;  2  Cor.  XL  2;  I  Cor. 
XII.  21-23;  Col.  I.  25-27;  Ezek.  XXVI.  25;  Hos.  II.  14-16; 
John  XVII.  23;  Hos.  XIX.  20;  Hos.  VI.  3;  Rev.  XIX.  7-9; 
Rev.  ch.  XXL ;  Ezek.  ch.  XIIL,  to  end. 

"The  Song  of  Solomon  was  not  to  be  a  dead  letter  but 
meant  by  the  Holy  Ghost  to  be  experience  of  the  Bride 
of  Christ.  I  find  now  in  wondrous  reality  in  His  written 
Word.  The  meaning,  hitherto  unknown,  of  different  pas- 
sages, stands  out  clear  and  distinct — and  Living  Word 
within  me,  throbbing  and  thrilling  and  permeating  my 
whole  being  with  His  glorious  Presence,  bears  witness  of 
the  written  truth.  *  *  * 

"One  day,  I  read  in  the  Word,  being  led  to  it,  the  as- 
surance of  the  angel  concerning  Mary.  Perhaps  that  day 


104 


Theodore  Schroeder 


— or  very  soon  after — the  Spirit  brought  to  me,  as  I  was 
preparing  dinner, — 'Fear  not,  that  which  is  conceived  within 
thee  is  of  the  Holy  Spirit.'  Such  a  rapid  and  powerful  wit- 
ness to  the  word  went^  through  and  through  me,  beginning 
at  the  organs  of  generation,  going  all  through,  that  I  was 
in  great  weakness,  physically.  The  tempter  had  been  busy 
about  this  time,  casting  fear  upon  me  lest  the  flesh  were  in 
the  matter.  Thus  the  Spirit  gave  him  answer — with  the 
revelation  came  the  thought,  'I  am  with  child!' — but  so 
sure  was  the  witness,  that  instead  of  being  greatly  alarmed 
— praise  the  Blessed  One,  a  great  joy  swelled  up  within  me 
at  the  thought  of  such  a  possibility. 

"A  glorious  victory,  afterwards.  He  showed  me  that 
it  meant  that  this  precious  truth  of  the  marriage  relation 
between  us  was,  'that  which  was  in  me  was  of  the  Holy 
Ghost.'  Praise  the  Lord!  He  has  made  me  willing  to  do — 
to  bear — to  suffer  anything  for  Him.  He  is  making  me 
fearless  and  filling  me  with  His  own  desire  for  the  spread 
of  all  His  truth — though  I  feel  more  especially  the  desire 
to  win  souls  for  Him.  I  am  assured  that  this,  His  most 
glorious  and  satisfying  revelation  of  Himself  must  be  ac- 
knowledged as  He  shall  call  upon  us  to  do  so,  or  we  shall 
come  into  darkness  indeed,  and  distress.  Shall  the  chosen 
and  honored  wife  shame  to  confess  her  husband  when  He 
would  woo  others,  through  her,  to  the  same  high  place? 

"When  we  enter  into  this  union,  He  is,  as  never  be- 
fore, the  Life  within  us,  and  how  shall  we  seek  to  suppress 
the  Life  that  has  entered  in  to  displace  our  own  old  self- 
life,  and  to  manifest  Himself  in  and  through  us,  in  what- 
ever way  He  wills.  He  must  be  permitted  to  speak  through 
us — and  as  I  constantly  pray,  to  love,  through  me.  Oh! 
with  us  there  must  be  no  question  but  one,  viz :  'What  wilt 
Thou,  my  Beloved?' — and  ready  response,  opening  up  to 
meet  His  blessed  will.  'As  Thou  wilt' — 'no  longer  I,  but 
Christ/  No  more  my  will,  in  the  slightest  particular,  but 
the  honorable  will  of  my  Beloved. 

"Reading  Madam  Guyon  in  'Spiritual  Progress,'  Part 
II.,  on  'Union  with  God,'  I  find  the  experience  into  which 
I  have  entered.  *  *  * 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  105 

"We  have,  in  these  last  days,  by  the  *  *  *  been 
realizing,  as  we  did  in  the  earlier  days,  the  Presence  and 
power  of  Him  whom  we  love.  God  comes  upon  us  as  we 
meet  together  from  6  to  7  o'clock  in  the  morning,  to  wait 
in  silence  before  Him — at  the  table,  before  and  after  meals ; 
as  we  partake  of  the  food  He  gives.  We  meet  Him  in  our 
rooms,  and  bow  down  before  Him.  As  I  go  about  my  work, 
ofttimes,  His  Presence  so  fills  me — or  I  hear  the  sweet  woo- 
ing of  His  Voice,  until  I  am  constrained  to  step  aside, 
where  I  may — to  be  alone  with  my  Love,  and  fall  at  His  feet 
in  adoring  worship.  *  *  * 

"One  asks,  how  is  this  Baptism  obtained?  In  the  same 
way  exactly  that  all  other  of  His  gifts  are — if  we  are  in 
the  condition  to  receive  them,  that  is,  by  faith.  He  says, 
'Thy  Maker  is  thy  husband/  and  'in  that  day  thou  shalt 
call  me— Ishi.'  *  *  * 

"I  would  say,  whatever  you  do,  do  not  question,  lest 
distress  and  perplexity  come  in;  but  immediately  go  to 
Jesus,  accepting  Him  as  Ishi — with  the  words  I  have  given 
— 'be  it  unto  me  as  Thou  wilt.'  He  will  do  the  teaching 
afterwards.  Then  again,  lest  one  should  make  of  it  too 
scriptural  a  truth,  separating  it  entirely  from  the  physical, 
it  should  be  plainly  understood  that  the  union  is  as  the 
sexual  intercourse  of  husband  to  wife. 

"If  we  expect  this  when  the  sensation  comes,  we  will 
not  be  alarmed,  but  willingly  and  freely  give  those  parts 
to  our  Divine  Husband  as  the  Bride  would  naturally  do. 

"I  have  written  very  plainly,  because,  first,  I  know  it 
is  the  way  He  would  have  me  write ;  and  secondly,  because 
I  would  seek  to  save  from  distress  and  fear,  that  would 
harass,  if  the  whole  truth  is  not  understood,  viz:  If  one 
looks  for  one  kind  of  manifestation  (spiritual),  and  finds 
physical  and  animal. 

"Let  me  hear  from  you  both,  when  the  Lord  leads. 
"Lovingly  in  Him.    ******* 

[For  convenience  of  future  reference  let  us  call  the 
authoress  of  this  letter  Mrs.  R.  S.  T. — Theodore  Schroeder.] 

The  same  friend  who  showed  me  the  above  letter,  also 
showed  me  letters  from  a  gentleman  who  is  the  editor 


106 


Theodore  Schroeder 


of  a  religious  newspaper,  giving  a  similar  experience,  upon 
several  ocasions  in  his  life  but  with  more  circumstance 
of  detail.  Nevertheless,  he  regarded  it  as  entirely  a  union 
with  Christ,  the  Bridegroom  of  the  Soul,  and  spoke  of  it 
reverently. 

Madam  de  Guyon  has  left  us  memoirs  of  her  rapturous 
union  with  the  Divine  Bridegroom  of  the  Soul,  and  verses 
concerning  His  love  and  watchful  tenderness  which  are 
rare  specimens  of  pure  and  delicate  sentiment.  Yet,  so 
little  was  Borderland  wedlock  understood  by  the  learned 
of  those  days,  that  Bossuet  made  a  coarse  joke  about  her 
marriage  with  the  Child  Jesus;  and  another  French  bishop, 
says  Arthur  Little,  wrote  what  might  almost  be  called  an 
episcopal  lampoon.  One  couplet  will  be  enough : 
"Par  1'epoux  quelque  foi  une  jeune  mystique 
Entend  un  autre  epoux  que  celni  du  Cantique." 
(A  young  woman  who  is  mystical  understands  another 
spouse  than  that  of  Canticles).  From  which  it  would  seem 
as  though  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  admitted  that  there 
might  be  objective  realities  in  Borderland  wedlock  (so  far 
at  least,  as  appears  on  the  surface)  eschew  objective  phenom- 
ena on  the  Borderland  and  tries  to  keep  her  mystics 
entirely  in  the  realm  of  subjectivity — a  realm  where  illu- 
sions arise  through  the  ease  with  which  it  is  confounded 
with  objective  planes  and  where  a  well-trained  mind  is 
needed  to  distinguish  between  that  which  is  suggested  or 
thought  hypnotically  and  that  which  actually  occurs.  And 
yet,  it  is  for  a  Divine  Bridegroom  on  the  Borderland  that 
the  Church  has  long  trained  her  nuns  in  the  life  of  ascetics. 
For  in  various  forms  of  austere  self-denial,  asceticism  as 
well  as  total  suppression  of  the  sex-nature  is  an  absolute 
preliminary,  step  to  Borderland  nuptials,  though  only  for 
a  time.  The  question  arises  however,  who  is  this  Divine 
Spouse  of  the  purified  and  ascetic  nun?  Is  it  Christ?  Or 
is  it  an  angelic  lover?  The  church  says  Christ  when  the 
union  is  uplifting  and  insists  that  the  relation  is  entirely 
mystical  and  not  at  all  objective.  I  think  from  the  testi- 
monies in  which  I  have  adduced  from  church  writings  an 
angelic  bridegroom  is  not  impossible.  And  it  is  quite  con- 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  107 

ceivable  that,  where  a  nun  believes  that  Christ  is  the  only 
Borderland  Spouse,  her  prejudice  may  result  in  her  lover's 
appearing  to  her  as  Christ,  just  as  the  mediaeval  witch  who 
believed  that  her  Borderland  spouse  could  only  be  the  Devil 
was  pretty  sure  to  see  him  with  horns  and  hoofs  and  to  be 
whisked  away  (subjectively)  to  a  Witch's  Sabbath  of  diab- 
lerie. 

Madam  de  Guyon,  indeed,  admits  that  "the  vision  is 
never  of  God  himself  nor  scarcely  ever  of  Jesus  Christ, 
as  those  who  have  it  picture  it  to  themselves:  it  is  an 
Angel  of  light,  who,  according  to  the  power  which  is  given 
to  him  by  God  for  this  purpose,  causes  the  soul  to  see  his 
representation,  which  it  takes  for  himself."  (That  is,  the 
vision  is  subjective,  probably  an  hypnotic  suggestion  in- 
duced by  the  angel.) 

The  following  stories  of  saintly  Catholic  women  who 
became  espoused  to  a  Borderland  bridegroom,  show  that 
they  were  untrained  in  distinguishing  subjective  from  ob- 
jective phenomena.  No  wonder  then,  if  they  should  mistake 
an  angel  for  Christ  himself. 

St.  Mary  Magdalene,  born  of  the  illustrous  house  of 
the  Pazzi  at  Florence  *  *  *  burned  with  so  great  a 
heat  of  divine  love,  that  she  would  at  times  exclaim  "O 
love!  I  can  bear  thee  no  longer!"  and  she  used  to  be  forced 
to  cool  her  bosom  with  a  copious  sprinkling  of  water  *  *  * 
By  Christ  she  was  wedded  with  a  ring,  and  crowned  with 
a  crown  of  thorns;  whilst  by  the  blessed  Virgin  she  was 
covered  with  a  most  white  veil,  and  by  St.  Augustine  she 
had  twice  written  upon  her  heart:  'The  word  was  made 
flesh.'  Being  rapt  out  of  her  senses  while  embroidering,  she 
used,  though  the  windows  were  closed  up  and  her  eyes 
veiled,  yet  to  proceed  with  her  work  and  finish  it  most 
accurately.  *  *  *  She  was  cannonized  by  Clement  IX 
in  1669.  (Breviary — Nuns  and  Nunneries,  37-38.) 

"The  first  flower  of  sanctity  from  America  was  the 
Virgin  Rose,  born  of  Christian  parents  at  Lima,  who  even 
from  the  cradle  shone  with  the  presages  of  future  holiness; 
for  the  face  of  the  infant  being  wonderfully  transfigured 
into  the  image  of  a  rose,  gave  occasion  to  her  being  called 


108  Theodore  Schroeder 

by  this  name;  to  which  afterwards  the  Virgin  Mother  of 
God  added  the  surname,  ordering  her  to  be  thenceforth 
called  the  Rose  of  Mary.  At  the  age  of  five  she  made  a 
vow  of  perpetual  virginity.  *  *  * 

"Having  wondrously  familiar  intercourse,  by  continual 
apparitions  with  her  guardian  angel  of  St.  Catherine  of 
Sienna,  and  the  Virgin  Mother  of  God,  she  merited  to  hear 
these  words  from  Christ — 'Rose  of  my  heart,  be  thou  my 
spouse.'  At  last  being  carried  to  the  Paradise  of  this  her 
spouse  and  glittering  with  many  miracles,  both  before  and 
since  her  departure,  Pope  Clement  X.  enrolled  her  with 
solemity  in  the  Catalogue  for  Holy  Virgins."  [From  Bre- 
viary?] 

The  following  are  extracts  from  the  Bull  of  her  canoni- 
zation : 

"At  this  time  she  was  favoured  with  the  following  reve- 
lation :  There  appeared  to  her  in  her  sleep  an  extraordinary 
person,  beautiful  above  all  the  sons  of  men,  habited  like  a 
sculptor  on  a  festival-day  and  he  seemed  to  court  her  as  a 
lover.  Before  Rose  would  consent  to  his  proposal  she 
set  him  a  task  namely,  to  carve  a  piece  of  marble ;  and  she 
bade  him  return  again  shortly,  when  the  sculpture  should 
be  finished.  At  the  return  of  her  spouse,  the  virgin  blushed 
when  she  perceived  the  task  she  had  assigned  him  was  ac- 
complished in  a  manner  beyond  his  strength ;  and  he  opened 
to  her  his  workshop,  where  were  a  number  of  elect  virgins, 
working  like  men  at  carving  and  polishing  marble.  She 
discovered  that  they  were  his  espoused,  by  the  style  and 
beauty  of  their  nuptial  dresses;  they  were  moistening  the 
stones,  and  preparing  them  for  cutting  by  their  tears,  which 
dripped  upon  them.  Rose  perceived  that  she  was  to  be 
dressed  like  one  of  them,  and  prepared  to  be  advanced  to 
a  like  espousal.  *  *  *  The  mystery  was  disclosed  to 
her  thus:  On  Palm  Sunday,  when  Rose  was  absorbed  in 
meditation,  in  the  chapel  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  of  the 
Rosary,  her  lover  thus  addressed  her:  'Rose  of  my  heart, 
be  my  love/  The  virgin  trembled  at  the  sweet  voice  of  her 
Divine  Spouse  and  at  the  instant  she  heard  the  voice  of 
the  Mother  of  God,  wishing  her  joy,  and  saying,  'Rose,  it 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  109 

is  no  mean  honour  which  this  my  Son  proposes  to  you  *  *  *' 
After  this  revelation,  Rose  began  to  torture  herself  more 
than  ever.  *  *  *  When  her  Spouse  did  not  appear  to 
her  at  the  accustomed  hour,  she  used  to  admit  an  angel 
(who  was  always  visibly  present  with  her  as  her  guardian) 
to  her  confidence,  as  his  footboy  or  valet  (ut  pararium  aut 
vereda  reum)." 

Various  miracles  were  said  to  have  been  wrought 
through  St.  Rose  of  Lima:  such  as,  for  instance,  the  ma- 
terialization of  bread  and  also  of  honey  in  her  father's 
house  in  time  of  scarcity ;  also  in  answer  to  prayer  the  pay- 
ment of  a  debt  of  her  father's  by  a  stranger  who  appeared 
at  the  house,  bringing  the  money  wrapped  up  in  a  cloth. 

"These  are  the  assistances  which  her  Divine  Spouse 
promised  to  the  parents  of  Rose,  that  he  would  give  her 
as  a  dowry,  when  he  wooed  her  in  the  character  of  a 
heavenly  sculptor."  (Ibid.) 

In  this  last,  we  seem  to  be  getting  back  to  these  angelic 
bridegrooms  spoken  of  in  ante — Nicene  Christian  literature, 
who  materialized  gold  and  other  precious  articles  for  be- 
loved earthly  spouses. 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  are  these  unions  with  a  heavenly 
spouse  mere  marital  unions  with  angels,  and  does  God  (or 
Christ,  as  His  human  manifestation)  play  the  part  in  them? 
By  no  means.  God  is  a  party  to  Borderland  wedlock  in  its 
highest  aspect,  whether  that  wedlock  be  an  objective  mar- 
riage union  as  in  earthly  wedlock  or  subjective  and  mysti- 
cal blending  with  a  divine  invisible  intelligence.  Mme.  de 
Guyon  was  right  in  saying  that  her  love  toward  God  and 
God's  love  toward  her  was  the  blissful  feature  in  Border- 
land experience.  There  are  lower  aspects  of  Borderland 
wedlock  than  that  which  includes  union  with  God ;  which 
are  subject  more  or  less  to  illusions,  fantastic  or  diabolical. 
Only  when  the  earthly  partner  aspires  to  the  Divine  Soul 
of  all  things,  does  the  supreme  bliss  of  union  with  the 
angelic  mate  transpire.  At  such  times  one  is  fain  to  apply 
such  a  conception  as  that  of  Mrs.  Gillen,  a  London  teacher 
of  Divine  Healing,  which  is : 

"The  Universe   consists  of  three  factors — a  Thinker, 


110  Theodore  Schroeder 

outward  Expression  of  His  thought,  and  the  realm  of  Men- 
tality which  lies  between  that  Thinker  and  His  Expression, 
and  which  is  the  means  by  which  the  Uncreated  shapes 
what  it  thinks  into  Expression  in  physical,  material  forms. 
If  we  conceive  this  Great  Thinker  (God)  as  the  central 
nucleus  of  a  great  circle"*  which  embraces  the  Universe, 
his  Expression  of  thoughts,  motives,  feelings,  will  be  on  the 
rim  of  the  large  circle,  and  the  sphere  of  Mentality,  where 
those  thoughts  are  being  moulded  into  shape  previous  to 
Expression,  will  be  the  zone  lying  between  the  nucleus,  or 
Central  Thinker  and  the  outer  rim  of  His  all-embracing 
circle.  Each  living  creature,  as  part  of  this  great  circle  is 
a  sector  of  the  circle  —  thus:  [drawing  ommitted]. 
Such  a  sector,  consists  as  does  the  entire  circle,  likewise,  of 
three  factors, — (1)  that  which  thinks;  (2)  mentality,  where 
thoughts  are  shaped;  (3)  the  body,  the  material  life,  where 
spirit  finds  expression  as  outward  form.  Nos.  2  and  3 — 
mentality  and  the  bodily  form — are  but  the  instruments  of 
the  spirit,  the  thinker  within  us.  The  thinker  within  us 
is  part  of  the  Great  Thinker  at  the  centre  of  the  circle  of 
the  Universe.  So  that,  according  to  Mrs.  Gillen,  it  is  incor- 
rect to  say  "I  have  a  spirit."  We  should  say  "I  am  spirit": 
i.  e.,  "I  am  part  of  God."  When  the  zone  of  our  mentality  is 
kept  unclouded  between  our  material,  bodily  form  and  that 
within  us  (up  at  the  point  of  the  sector  [drawing  omitted]) 
which  thinks,  we  are,  as  will  be  seen,  in  unbroken  com- 
munication with  the  Great  Thinker,  God,  who  is  Himself 
all  in  all :  for  our  thinking  self  is  part  of  Him.  The  applica- 
tion of  this  conception  from  Mrs.  Gillen's  point  of  view, 
is  that  when  that  zone  of  mentality  is  unclouded  by  dislike 
or  other  antitheses  of  love,  then  disease  and  other  mundane 
annoyances  no  longer  exist  for  us;  since,  being  part  of  God, 
and  being  one  with  Him  at  the  heart  of  the  Universe,  we 
have  His  power  to  create  outward  circumstances. 


*  This  should  be,  of  course,  a  sphere,  and  it  is  thus  that  Mrs. 
Gillen  prefers  to  conceive  the  Universe,  But  a  circle,  being  flat,  is 
easier  of  comprehension  by  non-mathematicians  when  divided  into 
sectors,  and  I  have  therefore  adopted  Mrs.  Gillen's  method  of  this 
easier  representation. 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  111 

From  my  own  point  of  view,  this  conception  has  a 
bearing  on  the  third  and  highest  degree  in  the  mysteries 
of  Borderland  wedlock.  But  before  enlarging  this,  it  may 
be  well  to  begin  with  the  preliminary  training  necessary 
to  render  one  the  Borderland  wife  or  husband  of  an  angel, 
and  to  set  forth  the  three  degrees  in  order  with  such  detail 
as  may  be  allowable  in  a  work  like  this,  which  is  intended 
for  the  general  public.  The  readers  hope  to  profit  by  these 
instructions  for  personal  development,  inasmuch  if  one  can 
persuade  one's  earthly  partner  to  try,  with  one's  self,  to 
live  the  life  which  is  obligatory  for  Borderland  wedlock, 
it  brings  the  Kingdom  of  heaven  into  earthly  relations. 

The  preliminary  training  necessary  may  be  summed 
up  by  the  admonition:  Live  a  correct  moral  life,  according 
to  our  own  highest  standard  (a  standard,  by  the  way,  which 
should  never  be  fixed,  but  always  moving  onward  to  still 
greater  excellence)  and  to  strive  to  think  clearly  and  to 
form  accurate  conceptions  of  ideas,  to  express  conceptions 
of  ideas,  to  express  conceptions  with  exactness,  and  to  fol- 
low Truth,  wherever  she  leads,  and  whatever  your  previous 
convictions  upon  any  given  subject.  Especially  you  must 
have  high  and  clean  thoughts  about  sex  that  you  can  think 
about,  read  about  it,  talk  about  all  the  details  without  agita- 
tion, without  grossness  of  thought,  and  with  as  impersonal 
a  state  of  mind  as  if  you  were  discussing  the  circulation  of 
the  blood.  And  you  must  learn  to  recognize  the  educational 
value  of  sex  attraction  in  the  evolution  of  humanity  from 
savagery  into  civilization.  Chiefest  of  all,  learn  that  sex  is 
holy  before  God  and  the  angels.  During  this  preliminary 
training,  all  sex  union  must  be  refrained  from  absolutely. 
The  nervous  energy  which  has  hitherto  been  evoked  for 
expenditure  in  this  direction  must  no  longer  be  expended, 
but,  by  continual  self-mastery,  be  returned  to  the  system 
for  its  upbuilding.  Gradually,  as  the  neophyte  who  has 
habituated  himself  to  a  pure-minded  and  idealistic  concep- 
tion of  sex  becomes  accustomed  to  thus  maintaining  self- 
poise,  no  matter  what  the  temptation,  there  will  spring  up 


112  Theodore  Schroeder 

in  him  a  joy  in  his  own  power  which  will  amply  repay  him 
for  all  his  struggles. 

This  process  may  take  months,  or  it  may  take  years. 
The  Hindus  have  a  saying  that  he  who  seeks  a  Borderland 
spouse  must  have  known  no  women  for  seven  years.  But 
whether  the  process  be  long  or  short  whether  the  partner 
be  sought  by  Borderland  or  on  the  earthly  plane  it  must 
be  perfected  before  the  first  degree  can  be  entered  upon. 
For  those  who  would  like  to  have  at  hand  some  text-book 
to  help  in  passing  this  preliminary  training,  I  would  recom- 
mend a  little  pamphlet  entitled,  "Practical  Methods  to  In- 
sure Success,"  published  by  the  Estoric  Publishing  Co., 
Applegate,  Placer  Co.,  California.  It  will  be  sent  free  on 
receipt  of  postage.  It  is  written  from  such  a  standpoint 
that  it  can  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  young  people,  and  it 
is  suggestive  rather  than  exhaustive  of  the  subiect  under 
consideration.  But  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  Borderland 
wedlock,  and,  so  far  as  I  can  tell,  it  seems  to  make  this 
training — which  I  call  preliminary — almost  the  ultimatum. 
It  also  advocates  incidentally  one  or  two  ideas,  such  as 
astrology,  and  the  necessity  for  occasional  fasting,  the  truth 
of  which  it  seems  to  me,  remain  to  be  proven.  But, 
apart  from  these  things,  it  is  so  admirably  written  that  it  will 
furnish  a  safe  ground-work  for  any  neophyte  to  build  up  his 
ideal  sex  life  upon,  and  therefore  I  earnestly  recommend 
its  perusal.  The  first  degree,  should  not  be  entered  upon, 
as  I  have  said,  until  the  neophyte  is  proficient  in  this  pre- 
liminary training. 

The  first  degree  embodies  the  teaching  of  what  is 
known  as  Alpha-ism.  Its  principle  is:  "No  sex  union 
except  for  the  distinct  purpose  of  begetting  a  child."  The 
bearings  of  this  principle  will  be  discussed  in  my  forth- 
coming treatise  on  "Psychic  Wedlock."  Suffice  it  to  say 
here  that  the  staunch  adherence  to  this  principle  has  up- 
lifted and  brightened  the  lives  of  many  husbands  and  wives 
who  had  begun  to  find  the  marriage  state  a  hell  on  earth. 
But  it  is  a  mistake  to  consider  this  the  most  advanced 
teaching  regarding  the  marital  relation.  It  is  beautiful,  helj 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  113 

ful,  and  necessary  to  acquire  for  those  who  would  live  the 
life  of  the  truly  wedded:  but  it  is  only  the  first  of  the  three 
steps  which  lead  husband  and  wife  up  to  the  ideal  relation. 
In  The  Christian  Life,  a  journal  edited  and  published  by 
Rev.  J.  D.  C'aldwell,  Chicago,  the  teaching  of  Alpha-ism 
will  be  found  set  forth  clearly  and  reverently. 

Following  this  should  come  another  pamphlet  called 
"Diana,"  written  by  Prof.  Parkhurst,  the  astronomer,  and 
published  by  the  Burnz  Publishing  Company,  New  York^ 
price  25  cents.  This  pamphlet  is  unfortunately,  marred  by 
being  printed  in  the  reform  spelling,  but  one  forgets  after 
a  page  or  two.  It  is  a  psycho-physiological  essay,  intended 
for  husbands  and  wives;  written  from  a  high  standpoint, 
and  in  refined  language.  Diana  will  furnish  the  initiate 
with  a  bridge  between  the  first  and  second  degrees ;  and  it 
is  one  of  the  most  important  and  helDful  contributions  to 
the  sex  question  that  have  ever  been  published. 

It  is  evident  that  this  first  degree  is  likely  to  prove 
a  stumbling-block  to  those  who  degrade  this  beautiful  prin- 
ciple of  Alpha-ism  (a  principle  embodied  in  the  Scriptural 
command,  "Be  fruitful  and  multiply")  into  an  excuse  for 
sowing  more  seed  than  is  needed  to  produce  the  harvest. 
The  man  or  women  who  whether  on  Borderland  or  in 
earthly  wedlock,  thus  persistently  distorts  the  above  Scrip- 
tural command  into  a  permission  for  something  very  dif- 
ferent from  what  was  intended  will  never  get  beyond  the 
first  degree  of  the  marriage  relation.  To  create  children 
is  not  only  a  high  and  holy  joy  to  every  right-thinking 
husband  and  wife,  it  is  a  solemn  duty  imposed  upon  them 
by  the  laws  of  their  own  being.  And  the  psychic  who 
shirks  this  duty  in  Borderland  wedlock,  although  maintain- 
ing marital  relations  by  the  angelic  spouse,  will  be  misled  by 
all  sorts  of  fantastic  or  diabolical  illusions.  Conversely  who- 
ever wedded  on  the  Borderland  to  an  angel,  holds  fast  the 
though  of  the  duty  of  the  married  to  create  (under  suitable 
conditions'),  will  ere  long  be  shown  the  truth — i.  e.,  that  be- 
tween two  people  dwelling  on  entirely  different  planes  of 
matter,  while  the  marital  relation  is  possible,  lawful  and 


114  Theodore  Schroeder 

beautiful,  to  beget  a  child  is  impossible  until  the  earthly 
partner  shall  have  crossed  to  the  world  beyond  the  grave. 
The  principle  of  Alpha-ism  must  be  mastered  by  those 
who  aspire  to  the  second  degree,  whether  on  the  Borderland 
or  the  Earthly  plane.  The  second  and  the  third  degrees 
have  this  principle  for  their  corner  stone.  In  none  of  the 
three  degrees  is  it  allowable  to  sow  the  seed  except  for  the 
distinct  purpose  of  begetting  a  child  who  has  been  rever- 
ently and  prudently  planned  for  at  just  at  that  time.  Nor  is 
it  ever  allowable  to  waste  the  seed  by  throwing  it  away 
(and  with  it  the  psychic  energy).  The  second  degree 
launches  the  initiate  upon  the  perilous  water  of  sense-grati- 
fication. If  his  previous  training  has  enabled  him  to  build 
a  staunch  craft  for  the  voyage,  well  and  good;  otherwise 
he  may  be  swamped  at  the  first  wave,  or,  if  he  rides  its 
crest,  and  the  crests  of  succeeding  waves  he  may  rashly 
venture  too  near  the  fatal  rapids  and  be  engulfed.  It  is 
possible  that  was  the  error  into  which  Josephus  says  the 
"giants"  fell  when  they  trusted  in  their  own  strength.  The 
second  degree  was  practiced  in  the  Oneida  Community,  for 
thirty  years,  and  was  obligatory  upon  all  its  male  members. 
The  result  was  highly  satisfactory  despite  the  society's 
unsavory  practice  of  community  of  women.  They  do  not 
seem,  however,  to  have  seen  the  necessity  for  a  similar 
training  of  female  members.  The  author  of  that  popular 
novel,  "The  Strike  of  a  Sex,"  has  been  preparing  a  book 
called  "Zugassent's  Theory,"  which  is  intended  to  deal  with 
this  method  from  a  popular  standpoint.  I  have  not  seen 
the  work  (which  I  believe  is  now  going  through  the  press)  ; 
but  from  what  I  know  of  the  author's  reputation  and  his 
efforts  hitherto  in  the  cause  of  social  purity,  I  feel  that  the 
book  is  likely  to  be  judiciously  worded  and  to  be  an  aid 
in  mastering  the  second  degree.  I  doubt  however,  if  it 
deals  with  the  training  of  the  feminine  partner.  But  the 
principles  underlying  the  training  of  the  man  may  be 
studied  out  from  such  a  work  and  applied  by  the  woman. 
The  author  is  George  N.  Miller,  59  Murray  St.,  N.  Y.  The 
second  degree  is  the  most  difficult  of  the  three  degrees  to 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  115 

acquire  physiologically  speaking,  inasmuch  as  it  exacts  su- 
preme self-control  at  a  crucial  moment.  Those  who  have 
never  attempted  this  degree,  when  told  of  it,  are  apt  to 
either  declare  it  impossible,  or  to  scorn  it  as  undesirable. 
But  those  who  have  once  mastered  this  degree  would  no 
more  forego  the  power  which  is  now  theirs,  than  a  freed 
prisoner  would  voluntarily  return  to  his  dungeon.  This 
way  lies  the  path  of  liberty  and  life,  and  joy,  and  they  who 
have  once  trodden  it  in  the  perfect  fullness,  of  magnetic 
union  with  a  dearly  loved  spouse  will  never  care  to  stumble 
along  the  old  paths.  The  Oneida  Community  despite  its 
social  mistake  of  promiscuity,  has  made  the  human  race 
its  everlasting  debtor,  in  that  it  has  left  a  thirty  years  scien- 
tific experiment  on  record  detailing  the  methods  and  at- 
testing the  value  of  this  second  degree. 

But  let  it  never  be  forgotten  that  this  second  degree 
must  be  built  upon  the  first  degree  Alpha-ism.  To  make 
use  of  it  as  a  means  to  increased  sensuality  is  to  degrade  it, 
and  to  do  so  effectually  bars  the  initiate  from  entrance  upon 
that  third  and  highest  degree  where  all  joys  physical,  men- 
tal, emotional  and  spiritual  reach  an  intensity  beside  which 
the  joys  of  the  first  and  second  degree  pale  as  a  candle- 
flame  in  the  radiance  of  sunlight.  Moreover,  if  this  degree 
be  thus  degraded  by  the  initiate,  it  is  almost  certain  to 
bring  nervous  diseases  of  a  very  distressing  character  in  its 
train. 

On  the  third,  and  highest  degree,  no  book  has  yet  been 
written,  so  far  as  I  know.  The  teaching  seems  to  have  been 
handed  down  orally  or  else  by  pictured  symbolism  or  mystic 
rite,  understood  only  by  the  initiates  of  this  degree.  I  am 
now  compiling  notes  for  my  work  on  "Psychic  Wedlock" 
which  I  hope  will  take  up  the  projected  three  degrees  in 
more  detail  than  is  possible  in  this  treatise.  For  the  present, 
I  can  only  lay  down  a  few  general  principles, — and  these 
principles  which  cannot  be  fully  grasped  by  any  except 
those  who  have  mastered  the  first  and  second  degrees. 

The  Hindus  have  the  theory  that  God  can  enjoy  food, 
drink  and  in  fact  all  sense-pleasures  but  only  through  the 


116 


Theodore  Schroeder 


offering  of  an  earthly  devotee.  Therefore,  the  devout  Hindi 
offers  God  a  share  in  all  his  gratifications  of  appetite — thui 
living  out,  indeed,  the  Christian  Apostle's  admonition  oi 
"whether  we  eat  or  drink,  do  all  to  the  glory  of  God." 
Too  often,  it  is  true,  this  doctrine  is  perverted  into  an 
excuse  for  sensual  excesses,  the  debauchee  soothing  hi< 
conscience  by  an  offering  to  the  god  whom  he  worships. 
Thus  has  this  sacred  inner  mystery  become  degraded 
the  unworthy.  But  even  the  tried  and  staunch  initiate  ol 
the  first  and  second  degree,  unless  he  holds  grace  as  h< 
enters  upon  this  third  degree,  unless  he  holds  fast  to  th< 
teaching:  "Aspire  to  the  highest."  Only  in  reverent  an< 
earnest  aspiration  to  the  Divine,  to  the  Source  of  all  things, 
to  the  Eternal  Energy  of  the  Universe,  may  this  third  d< 
gree  be  entered  upon,  either  in  Borderland  or  earthly  wed- 
lock. The  more  intense  the  emotion,  the  more  absolute 
the  necessity  for  aspiring  with  all  one's  faculties  to  unioi 
with  the  Divine.  Every  element  of  selfish  desire  must 
eliminated ;  one  must  aspire  at  that  time  because  it  is  right 
and  beautiful  to  bring  one's  holiest  and  tenderest  and  most 
ecstatic  emotions  into  the  presence  of  the  Great  Thinker, 
in  order  that  they  may  there  be  purged  of  all  dross  and  b< 
a  worthy  expression  of  our  own  best  self.  That  is  the  first 
half  of  this  highest  degree.  The  second  half  is  entered 
upon  when  spontaneously — not  from  selfish  desire — it 
dawns  upon  us  that  to  offer  God  a  share  of  our  pleasure 
at  the  moment  may  give  him  pleasure.  When  single- 
heartedly,  and  in  all  sincerity  and  benevolent  feeling  toward 
God  we  invite  him  to  become  the  third  partner  in  the  mari- 
tal union,  then,  indeed,  do  we  understand  what  it  is  to  love 
and  to  be  loved.  We  enter  thus  into  a  personal  relation 
with  God  in  which,  Impersonal  Force  though  He  be,  we 
realize  vividly  that  we  are  one  with  Him,  and  with  Him 
one  with  all  the  universe.  For  that  in  us  which  thinks — 
the  apex  of  our  particular  sector  of  the  circle  of  the  universe 
is,  on  the  one  hand,  in  unclouded  relation  with  our  physical 
self  on  the  outer  rim,  and  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  merged 
into  the  Great  Thinker,  the  Great  Nucleus  who  is  at  the 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  117 

centre  of  all  creation.  From  that  moment,  we  are  able  to 
say  to  this  Pantheos,  Great  Thinker,  to  this  All-Pervading 
Energy,  "My  friend!"  (And  inasmuch  as  God  is  love  in  the 
fullest  possible  sense  of  that  expression,  the  connubial  bliss 
of  Borderland  lovers  is  increased  tenfold.)  From  that 
moment,  we  know  what  it  is  to  truly  love  God.  This  divine 
trinity  in  unity  must  be  the  final  goal  of  Borderland  wedlock, 
if  such  wedlock  is  to  be  permanent. 

It  is  in  this  sense,  I  am  inclined  to  think,  that  Mme. 
de  Guyon,  St.  Teresa,  and  other  mystical  Spouses  of  Christ 
received  the  Divine  Bridegroom.  Subjectively  mingled 
with  this  rapturous  union  with  Diety  no  doubt,  were  the 
experiences  of  union  with  the  angelic  husband,  of  whose 
very  existence  as  such,  they  were  unaware,  confounding 
him  with  the  Impersonal  Deity  who  was  the  third  element 
in  their  union.  Then,  too,  we  must  remember  that  these 
women  intelligent  as  they  were,  were  untrained  in  the  nice 
distinctions  of  subjective  and  objective  hallucinatory,  verid- 
ical, automatic,  telepathic,  subconscious,  etc.,  evolved  by 
the  modern  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  and  other  re- 
cent investigators  of  the  occult.  Moreover,  there  are 
psychical  experiences  in  Borderland  wedlock  which  are  sub- 
jective while  they  seem  to  the  untrained  occults  to  be 
objective.  Of  such  a  nature  (apparently)  was  the  experi- 
ence of  a  Philadelphia  lady,  a  Spiritualist,  who  told  me  of 
her  spirit  husband.  She  was  a  widow,  and  this  spirit  was 
a  deceased  lover  from  whom  she  had  been  separated  in 
youth  by  a  misunderstanding.  He  returned  from  the  world 
beyond  the  grave  to  explain  matters,  and  to  reclaim  his 
lost  love,  and  finally  proposed  that  she  should  consider  her- 
self to  be  his  wife  from  that  time  on,  assuring  her  that  it 
was  so  recorded  in  his  land.  Thereafter,  on  several  occa- 
sions, she  experienced  (when  she  was  by  no  means  pre- 
pared) a  series  of  galvanic  shocks  extending  upwards 
through  her  body.  These  were  doubtless  hypnotic  sugges- 
tions to  prepare  and  train  her  for  experiences  of  a  more 
objective  character.  The  manifestations,  however,  were  in- 


118  Theodore  Schroeder 

terfered  with  by  the  return  of  a  chronic  complaint  of  the 
liver  with  which  she  had  suffered  at  intervals  for  years. 

If  it  be  asked  how  a  misty,  vaporous  being,  such  as  a 
ghost  is  popularly  supposed  to  be,  can  sustain  an  objective 
marital  union  on  the  Borderland,  I  reply  that  the  ghost  is 
not  mist-like  in  reality,  but  only  appears  so  because  he  is 
in  a  new  world  of  matter,  with  a  more  extended  scale  of 
vibrations  per  second  for  the  various  forces  of  sound,  heat, 
light,  and  electricity  than  obtain  upon  our  earthly  plane. 
Beyond  the  last  faint  violet  ray  of  the  spectrum,  sciena 
has  demonstrated  that  there  are  rays  of  color  to  which  we 
are  blind,  but  which  so  lowly  a  creature  as  the  ant  can 
perceive.  Dogs  can  trace  a  scent  of  which  we  have  no  per- 
ception. Many  people  are  so  color-blind  as  to  be  unable 
to  distinguish  a  red  from  a  green  light — a  fact  brought  out 
some  years  since  very  markedly  in  an  examination  for  rail- 
way service  in  England.  An  astigmatic  person  is  almost, 
if  not  quite  blind,  to  a  fine  line  running  in  some  one  direc- 
tion. Recent  experiments  by  Galton  have  shown  that  cats 
and  birds  are  sensitive  to  a  whistle  which  is  inaudible  to 
the  human  ear.  If  our  inferiors  in  the  animal  Kingdom 
reveal  such  marked  superiority — to  ourselves  in  sensitive- 
ness to  vibrations  is  it  unlikely  that  our  former  equal  and 
our  superior,  the  deceased  human  being  who  has  passed  out 
of  earth  life  into  a  wider  realm,  shall  also  acquire  sensitive- 
ness to  a  wider  range  of  vibrations?  The  ghost  probably 
senses  all  things  on  our  plane,,  plus  a  great  many  more  things 
on  his  own.  Our  sensations  are  included  in  his,  but  his  ex- 
tend far  on  each  side  of  our  own.  Therefore  we  cannot 
perceive  his  form  or  hear  his  voice  in  all  his  material  rela- 
tions, because  he  is  in^a  world  where  forms,  colors,  sounds 
which  we  are  physically  incapable  of  perceiving — except  in 
the  exalted  condition  of  the  clairvoyant  or  clairaudient — 
are  part  and  parcel  of  his  daily  life.  When  we  see  him,  we 
see  only  through  the  narrow  range  of  our  own  limited  scale 
of  vibrations :  so  that  we  see  him  but  in  part,  and  therefore 
mistily,  or  hear  his  voice  but  faintly,  or  perhaps  not  at  all, 
as  it  may  cover  a  range  of  vibrations  per  second  quite  one 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  119 

side  or  the  other  of  our  own  scale  of  sound  vibrations.  For 
this  reason,  he  is  often  obliged  to  speak  to  the  psychic  by 
the  interior  voice — an  hypnotic  rendition,  apparently,  of  his 
voice  through  the  medium  of  her  sub-consciousness.  For  this 
reason,  because  his  voice  is  not  audible,  as  a  rule,  to  her 
physical  ears,  the  psychic  must  learn  to  discriminate  ac- 
curately between  this  interior  voice  and  the  voiced  imagin- 
ings of  her  own  sub-consciousness,  which  will  utter  them- 
selves quite  as  audibly  as  does  the  interior  voice  if  the 
psychic  has  not  acquired  the  faculty  of  holding  her  sub- 
consciousness  well  under  control.  With  experience,  how- 
ever, the  discrimination  comes  in  time  to  be  made  inerringly, 
as  St.  Teresa  has  stated. 

Through  the  interior  voice,  a  Borderland  mystic  may 
be  wooed  and  won  as  a  wife  if  she  be  clear-headed  and  keep 
the  moral  law  with  scrupulous  care.  She  does  not  need 
to  be  clairaudient  to  hear  her  lover's  voice  interiorly.  Nor 
does  she  need  to  be  clairvoyant,  if  she  be  willing  to  go  it 
blind,  so  to  say.  She  is  then  in  the  condition,  however,  of 
a  person  who  is  totally  blind ;  and  who  is  almost  totally 
deaf.  Since  she  needs  to  be  on  the  alert  quite  as  much  as 
if  she  were  dependent  on  an  ear-trumpet,  in  order  to  make 
no  mistake  in  catching  the  remarks  made  by  the  interior 
voice.  Nevertheless,  even  people  who  are  blind  and  people 
who  are  deaf  may  fall  in  love  with  some  one  on  this  earthly 
plane  and  marry  despite  the  defective  means  of  communi- 
cating ideas.  Fortunately  there  are  other  means  of  trans- 
mitting ideas  than  by  the  interior  voice  or  by  the  eye  or 
the  ear.  In  this  connection  the  following  article  by  Paul 
Tyner,  on  "The  sixth  sense  and  how  to  develop  it,"  in  The 
Arena  for  June,  1894,  offers  a  suggestive  thought. 

I  have  said  that  I  regard  psychometry  as  the  key  to 
the  development,  on  rational  lines,  of  the  sixth  sense. 
Psychometry  itself  seems  to  be  a  development  on  the  psychic 
side  of  that  physical  sense,  which  is  at  once  the  finest, 
the  most  subtle,  the  most  comprehensive,  and  the  most 
neglected  of  all  the  five  senses — the  sense  of  touch.  While 
distributed  over  the  whole  surface  of  the  body,  through  the 


120  Theodore  Schroeder 

nervous  system,  this  sense  is  more  delicate  and  sensitive 
in  some  parts  than  in  others.  The  marvellous  possibilities 
of  its  development  in  the  hands,  are  shown  in  the  cases  of 
expert  silk  buyers  and  of  coin  handlers.  The  first  are 
enabled  merely  by  touch,  to  distinguish  instantly  the' weight 
and  fineness  of  a  score  of  different  pieces  of  cloth  hardly 
distinguishable  to  the  eye.  Girls  employed  in  the  mints, 
while  counting  gold  and  silver  coins  at  an  astonishingly 
rapid  speed,  detect  at  once  the  minutest  difference  of  over- 
weight or  underweight  in  the  coin  passing  through  their 
hands.  The  remarkable  sensitiveness  developed  by  the 
blind  in  the  tips  of  the  fingers,  under  such  scientific  culti- 
vation as  that  provided  in  the  Perkins  Institute,  of  which 
Laura  Bridgman  in  the  past  and  Helen  Keller  in  the  present 
are  such  conspicious  examples,  is  familiar  to  most  readers. 
It  may  not  be  so  generally  known  that  recent  post- 
mortem examinations  of  the  bodies  of  the  blind  reveal  the 
fact  that  in  the  nerves  at  the  ends  of  the  fingers,  well  de- 
fined cells  of  gray  matter  had  formed,  identical  in  substance 
and  in  cell  formation  with  the  gray  matter  of  the  brain. 
What  does  this  show?  If  brain  and  nerves  are  practically 
identical,  is  it  not  plain  that,  instead  of  being  confined  to 
the  cavity  of  the  skull,  there  is  not  any  part  of  the  surface 
of  the  body  that  can  be  touched  by  a  pin's  point  without 
pricking  the  brain?  It  shows,  moreover,  I  think,  that, 
given  all  the  sensations  generally  received  through  the  other 
physical  organs  of  sense  may  be  received  through  the  touch 
at  the  tips  of  the  fingers.  It  proves  that  a  man  can  think 
not  alone  in  his  head,  but  all  over  his  body,  and  especially 
in  the  great  nerve  centres  like  the  solar  plexus,  and  the 
nerve  ends,  on  the  palms  of  the  hands  and  the  soles  of  the 
feet.  The  coming  man  will  assuredly  perceive  and  think  in 
every  part,  from  his  head  down  to  his  feet.  Need  I  suggest 
the  importance  of  remembering,  in  this  connection,  how 
much  in  our  modern  life  is  conveyed  by  the  hand  clasp, 
or  the  deep  delight  that  comes  to  lovers  in  caressing 
touches,  when  impelled  to  pat  the  hands  or  cheek  of  the 
beloved  one,  or  to  stroke  her  hair?  It  is  through  the 
emotional  life  that  our  sensitiveness  is  led  from  the  physical 


Heavenly  Bridegrooms  121 

to  the  psychic  plane  of  sensation.  (The  Arena,  Boston,  June 
1894.) 

It  is  through  the  nerves  of  touch  that  Borderland  wed- 
lock becomes  objective.  The  lover  may  remain  forever 
invisible,  as  in  the  fairy  stories,  materializing  only  at  night, 
and  then  only  to  the  touch  of  those  nerves  most  capable 
of  sensing  his  tangibility.  But,  ghost  though  he  be,  it  was 
the  testimony  of  Reginald  Scot  in  his  "Discourse  of  Witch- 
craft" that  the  Witch  "hath  more  pleasure  that  way,  they 
say,  than  with  anie  mortall  man."  The  angelic  bridegroom, 
as  well  as  this  earthly  partner,  must  live  a  correct  moral 
life  and  think  clearly ;  and  this  means  that  he  must  exercise 
a  tenderness,  a  considerate  regard  for  his  wife's  comfort 
and  happiness,  and  also  a  marital  self  control  of  which  too 
many  earthly  men  are  ignorant.  No  wonder  then,  that,  on 
the  plane  of  sentiment,  she  should  prefor  this  ghostly 
spouse  to  "anie  mortall  man."  And  on  the  plane  of  physio- 
logical relations,  I  think  I  have  already  shown  that  the 
husband  who  is  an  initiate  in  the  third  degree,  who  has 
trained  his  wife  therein,  can  assure  her  of  connubial  bliss 
which  is  perpetual.  The  Borderland  bridegroom  has  this 
advantage,  too,  over  the  earthly  bridegroom ;  being  able  to 
read  his  partners  thoughts,  he  can  adapt  himself  to  her  most 
delicate  fluctuations  of  sentiment  at  a  moment's  warning, 
and  so  never  fail  to  be  truly  her  companion. 

"If  one  could  prolong  the  happiness  of  love  into  mar- 
riage," wrote  Rousseau,  "we  should  have  Paradise  on 
earth." 

In  my  own  case,  Paradise — the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
has  come  into  my  earth  life,  and  it  has  come  through  my 
heavenly  bridegroom. 


THE  EROTOGENESIS  OF  RELIGION 

Studies  Contributed  by 

THEODORE  SCHROEDER. 


Adolesence  and  religion  n.  t.  p.  124-148  p.  8°. 

Reprint:  Journal  of  Religious  Psychology,  including  its  Anthro- 
pological and  Sociological  Aspects,  v.  6;  April,  1913.  (Worces- 
ter, Mass.) 

Differential  (The)  essence  of  religion. 

Truth  Seeker,  v.  41;  pp.  689-690;  706^707;  726-727;  October  31;  No- 
vember 7  and  14,  1914.  (New  York  City.) 

Erotogenesis  (The)  of  religion.  Reprint:  Alienist  and  Neurologist, 
v.  28;  no.  3;  pp.  330-341;  August,  1907.  (St.  Louis.) 

Also:    Truth  Seeker,  v.  34;   pp.   641-643;   October   12,   1907, 

(New  York  City.) 
Trans.    Zeitschrift  fur  Religionspsychologie,  v.  1 ;  p.  445-455. 

Halle  a.  S.  [1909.] 

Erotogenesis  of  religion.  A  bibliography.  (Bruno  chap  books,  v.  3; 
no.  2;  February,  1916.  New  York  City.)  59  p. 

"Special   series." 

Erotogenesis  (The)  of  religion.    Developing  a  working  hypothesis. 
[St.  Louis]  1913. 

Reprint:    Alienist  and  Neurologist,  v.  34;  no.  4;  pp.  444-476; 

November,  1913. 

Erotogenetic  (The)  interpretation  of  religion.   Its  opponents  reviewed. 
Reprint :  Journal  of  Religious  Psychology,  including  its  Anthro- 
pological and  Sociological  Aspects,  v.  7;  pp.  23-44;  January, 
1914.     (Worcester,  Mass.) 
Heavenly    bridegrooms.      By    Ida    C.      Introduction    by    Theodore 

Schroeder. 

Alienist  and  Neurologist,  v.  36;  pp.  434-448,  November,  1915;  v.  37; 
pp.  52-69,  February,  1916;  pp.  211-222,  May  1916;  pp.  259-267  Au- 
gust, 1916;  v.  38;  pp.  121-146,  May,  1917;  pp.  388-410,  August,  1917. 
(St.  Louis.) 

Hours  with  a  revivalist.  A  report  from  the  psychologic  viewpoint.** 
With  bibliography  of  author's  essays  on  the  erotogenesis  of  re- 
ligion. The  Truth  Seeker  Co.  62  Vesey  street,  New  York  City, 
1917.  19  p. 

"This  essay,  somewhat  abridged,  first  appeared  in  The  Seven 
Arts,  New  York  City,  September,  1917  pp.  646-658.   In  its  pres- 

I 


ent  and  more  complete  form  it  was  published  in  The  Truth 

Seeker  September  15,  1917,  v.  44,  pp.  577-579,"  under  the  title 

of  "Religion  Wearing  Away,  The  erosive  effect  of  the  secular 

science  illustrated."    The  bibliography  lists  26  items,  pp.  18-19. 

Incest  in  Mormonism.     American  Journal  of  Urology  and  Sexology, 

v.  11 ;  no.  10;  pp.  409-416;  October,  1915.    (New  York  City.) 

Abstracted  in :  Psychoanalytic  Review,  v.  3 ;  pp.  223-230 ;  April, 

1916.     (Lancaster,  Pa.) 

Mat[t]hias  the  prophet  (1788-1837)  ;  a  contribution  to  the  study  of  the 
erotogenesis  of  religion,  n.  t  p.  59-65;  p.  8°. 

Reprint:  Journal  of  Religious  Psychology,  including  its  Anthro- 
pological and  Sociological  Aspects,  v.  6;  pp.  59-65;  January, 

1913.  (Worcester,  Mass.) 

Also:    Truth  Seeker,  v.  40;  pp.   102-103;  February  15,  1913. 

(New  York  City.) 
Outline  for  a  study  of  the  erotogensis  of  religion,  n.  t.  p. 

Reprint:  Journal  of  Religious  Psychology,  including  its 
Anthropological  and  Sociological  Aspects,  v.  5 ;  pp.  394-401 ; 
October,  1912.  (Worcester,  Mass.) 

Proxies  in  mormon  polygamy.  The  Forum,  v.  55:  pp.  341-351;  March, 
1916.  (New  York  City.) 

Part  reprinted  in:    Truth  Seeker,  v.  43;  pp.  215-216;  April  1, 

1916.     (New  York  City.) 

Abstracted  in:  Psychoanalytical  Review,  v.  3;  pp.  223-230; 
April,  1916.  (New  York  City.) 

Psychogenetics  of  androcratic  evolution.  Reprint:  Psychoanalytic 
Review,  v.  2;  no.  3;  pp.  277-285;  July,  1915.  Lancaster,  Pa.,  New 
Era  Printing  Co.,  1915. 

Bibliography,  verso  last  p. 
Religion  and  sensualism  as  connected  by  clergymen,  15  p.  4°. 

Reprint :  American  Journal  of  Religious  Psychology  and  Edu- 
cation, v.  3;  pp.  16-28:  May,  1908.  (Worcester,  Mass.) 
Also:  Truth  Seeker,  v.  35;  pp.  401-402;  June  27,  1908.   (New 

York  City.) 
Abridged  trans. :  Sexual  Probleme,  v.   10;  pp.   192-198,  March, 

1914.  (Frankfurt,  a.   M.) 

Sex  determinant  (The),  in  Mormon  theology.  A  study  in  the  eroto- 
genesis of  religion,  15  (I.)  p. 

Reprint:  Alienist  and  Neurologist,  v.  29;  pp.  208-222;   May, 

1908.  (St.  Louis.) 
Trans:   Imago,  v.  3;   pp.    197-204;   April,   1914.      (Leipzig  u. 

Wien.) 
Abstracted    in:    Psychoanalytic    Review,    v.    3;    pp.    223-230; 

April,  1916.   (Lancaster,  Pa.) 
Also  in:  Truth  Seeker,  v.  43;  pp.  449-450;  July  15,  1916.    (New 

York  City.) 

Spiritual  Joys,  an  attempted  description,  by  Cadi.  Introduction  by 
Theodore  Schroeder.  Azoth,  v.  2;  no.  3;  pp.  140-142;  March,  1918. 
(New  York  City.) 

II 


Wildisbuch  (The),  crucified  saint.    A  study  in  the  erotogenesis  of  re- 
ligion,   n.  t.  p. 

Reprint:  Psychoanalytic  Review,  v.  1;  pp.  129-148;  February, 

1914.    (New  York   City.) 

Abridged    trans,     in :     Zentralblatt    fur    Psychoanalyse    und 
Psychotherapie,  v.  4;  pp.  464-471;  July,  1914.    (Wiesbaden.) 
Theodore  Schroeder's  work  upon  this  subject  has  been  discussed  in 
the  following  places: 

Archives  de  Psychologic,  February,   1914. 

Boston  Herald,  April  10,  1915. 

Current  Opinion,   March,   1915. 

Journal  of  Religious  Psychology,  November,  1914. 

New  York  Times,  Magazine  Section,  April  4,  1915. 

Psychoanalytic  Review  January  1915. 

Truth  Seeker  December  12,  1914. 

Zeitschrift  fur  angewandte  Psychologic,  1915;  v.  9;  pp.  533-538. 

Zeitschrift   fur   Religionspsychologie,   1908;   v.  2;  p.  28. 


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